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National Concerns and Technical Challenges
Pages 54-96

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From page 54...
... The existing and potential utility of materials research and development in solving a range of other real-life problems will be evident in our discussion of opportunities in materials research (page 97~. In addition, we have examined the diverse technical challenges of the country's current concerns from two vantage points: challenges in the materials cycle, and challenges in specific areas of national concern, including a priority analysis based on questionnaire replies.
From page 55...
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From page 56...
... Exploration. The sensing, information-processing, and transmitting functions of orbiting earth-resources satellites and lunar rovers were made possible by progress in development of electronic and structural materials.
From page 57...
... We need very much to find new means of extracting basic materials from ores of progressively lower grade and from low-grade wastes, processes that are more efficient, that cost less, consume less energy, and cause less pollution. Aluminum already is being extracted from the abundant anorthosite (in the Soviet Union)
From page 58...
... A material may be substituted for another of the same class, as when aluminum replaces copper in electrical conductors, or for one of a different class, as when polyethylene replaces galvanized steel in buckets. We will need substitutes for certain metals that have unique and important properties but threaten to become critically scarce in the not-so-distant future These include gold, mercury, and palladium.
From page 59...
... Continuous on-line assembly with minimum human intervention, continuing objective for production lines, is virtually achieved in the manufacture of integrated circuits, where relatively few of the 200 or more processing steps are controlled actively by operators. The approach should be extended to other areas of processing and manufacturing.
From page 60...
... Demand will continue for higher-performance alloys, tougher glass and ceramics, stronger and tougher composites, greater magnetic strengths. But the task grows more complex as performance criteria come to embrace
From page 61...
... Challenging problems for functional substitution include: developing materials and techniques for new methods of generating and storing electrical energy; and finding functional substitutes and biological materials to replace human organs.
From page 62...
... Facilitating the recovery and recycling of materials -- apart from new approaches to questions like collection and separation -- presents broad new problems in product design and materials selection. Product designs should ease dismantling and separation of components, but the rising costs of repair services tend to favor materials and products designed for replacement as whole units rather than for dismantling and repair.
From page 63...
... In connection with national concerns of the latter type, we have surveyed a number of specific challenges and priorities for materials science and engineering. One of our approaches involved a novel questionnaire on Priorities in the Field of Materials Science and Engineering.
From page 64...
... Exhaustive treatments are beyond the intent of this summary report, though considerable additional information was obtained from the priority analysis (see Opportunities in Materials Research, page 973. Needs in Communications Society continues to demand communications systems of greater capacity, versatility, and reliability for many purposes: telephone; radio and television program distribution; information processing, storage, and retrieval; automatic billing, credit-checking, and other operations of a cashless society; airline and hotel reservations; police and fire departments; aircraft navigation and traffic control.
From page 65...
... 65 TABLE 13 Relative Importance of Materials Science and Engineering in Nine Areas of Impact Area of Impact Communications, Computers, and Control Defense and Space Energy Transportation Equipment Health Services Environmental Quality Housing and Other Construction Production Equipment Consumer Goods * Rating Number 92 92 90 69 69 68 67 61 60 Rating numbers were derived from analysis of replies to a priorities questionnaire, using the methodology described in Appendix A
From page 66...
... Also necessary will be new switching methods that take advantage of the memory and logic capabilities of integrated circuits, magneticbubble and charge-coupled devices, and minicomputers. New customer services will call for cheap, reliable visual displays and data terminals to replace the more cumbersome cathode-ray tube and teletypewriter.
From page 67...
... The need for quality control is particularly severe in the manufacture of integrated circuits and optical devices, especially as the dimensions of such devices become smaller and smaller. Critical, too, are advances in the photolithographicpolymer mask process used to lay down circuit pathways.
From page 68...
... These arrays will comprise a hybrid technology -- integrated optics -- optical devices like lightemitting diodes, lasers, photodetectors, and optical waveguides driven or controlled by silicon integrated circuits. Needs in Space Steady improvement in the performance of materials is required to meet this country's current and projected priorities in space, which fall into three general areas: manned space flight, space science, and space applications.
From page 69...
... These include superalloys, coated refractory metals, and ablators. The Space Shuttle and other spacecraft will require materials that provide better mechanical properties per unit of weight.
From page 70...
... Discussed here are some selected materials needs in superconductors for generators and transmission lines; in high-temperature gas turbines; in magnetohydrodynamic generators; in breeder reactors; in solar-energy conversion; and in materials and devices for storing electrical energy.
From page 71...
... Despite the costs and engineering problems of cryogenic cooling, superconducting alloys may allow the efficiency of conventional electrical generators to be increased and their size reduced. Size and efficiency depend in part on the intensity of the magnetic field that can be produced by a given volume and weight of electrical conductor Superconductors like niobium-tin yield very high magnetic fields; progress is being made with this approach, but difficult fundamental and engineering obstacles remain.
From page 72...
... Hi~h-TemDerature Turbines. Electric utilities have turned significantly to generating electricity with gas turbines, which can be obtained and brought on-line quickly, to make up shortages caused by delayed additions of nuclear and sometimes conventional generating capacity.
From page 73...
... In the MHD device, current generated in the gas by passing it through a transverse magnetic field is drawn off by electrodes inserted into the stream. An MHD generator should achieve a thermal efficiency of 50 to 60 percent, but the materials problems are unusually severe.
From page 74...
... Existing materials cannot fully meet the requirements. The present silicon solar cells are effective in the space program, but widespread conversion of sunlight to direct current requires
From page 75...
... The secondary cell, when recharged, converts electrical energy to chemical energy, stores it, and reconverts it to electrical energy upon demand.
From page 76...
... In such a context any technical advance can affect costs markedly. More specifically, the automobile industry faces
From page 77...
... In few industries is competition among materials as fierce as in the automobile industry, which converts some $S billion in materials annually into 10 million vehicles and will struggle to lop pennies from the manufacturing cost per car. The competition is being intensified by vehicle safety and emission standards.
From page 78...
... The consequent increased demand for chromium in exhaust systems may require materials substitutions in other uses.
From page 79...
... Expanded research is in prospect on joining, particularly the use of adhesive bonding and inertial and electron-beam welding in large-volume production. Already well established is the effort to reduce materials consumption by sharper design and improved functional characteristics.
From page 80...
... Among important materials problems in marine transportation is corrosion resistance in propulsion systems. The relative availabilities of various fuels are somewhat uncertain in the future, but it must be assumed that the cheapest residual oils will be used in marine machinery: boilers for steam turbines, marine diesels,
From page 81...
... Aircraft. In airborne transportation, significant progress can be made by improving the thrust-to-weight ratio of jet engines.
From page 82...
... Turbine materials for operation above 1,300°C probably will have to be made of coated refractory metals. Needs in Health Services Only recently have medical and materials people begun to work seriously together to make or modify materials specifically for medical use.
From page 83...
... . Still, workers in these smaller areas have achieved a degree of success by innovative use of materials like silicone rubber, Dacron, and polyvinyl chloride in heart valves, oxygenators, and vascular (circulatory system)
From page 84...
... The problem has become even more pressing since July 1, 1973, when Medicare began to pay 80 percent of the cost of kidney dialysis after the first three months of treatment. There are major unknowns in the reactions of blood with surgical implant materials.
From page 85...
... The problem is likely to persist so long as evaluation of many of these materials depends on the surgical profession, since the system is not designed to obtain the comprehensive life-test data needed for surgical implant materials. Federal agencies are beginning to encourage their contractors and grantees in biomaterials research and development to adopt the methods of industrial materials science and engineering, including scientific standards of measurement.
From page 86...
... Needs in Environmental Management Many of the nationts environmental problems reflect the customary inattention to the materials cycle. Industry, including the materials community, has tended, understandably, to optimize only that segment of the cycle that deals with the incoming material through to the outgoing product, especially the parts of that segment where optimization will reduce costs.
From page 87...
... Recycling. Materials scientists and engineers can create materials, or combinations of materials, that function as required and, at the same time, are amenable to product designs that facilitate recycling.
From page 88...
... Examples of potential uses of wastes include the manufacture of brick from unleash or coal~ash slag combined with suitable binders. One new method of making brick combines almost any solid inorganic material with a small amount of Portland cement and a proprietary chemical accelerator.
From page 89...
... In any event, the packaging problem illustrates an environmental role of materials science and engineering applied to the materials cycle. Needs in Housing The materials-related problems in housing, even those of broad import, hamper progress much less than do legal, economic, and cultural constraints.
From page 90...
... The peculiar needs of flammability research could be well served by a center devoted to this subject. Performance Criteria.
From page 91...
... Replacement of building codes by performance criteria is expected eventually to permit the development of modular home-building systems. These could consist of standard components, assembled offsite into a variety of configurations.
From page 92...
... Mobile homes are made in sufficient volume -- the number sold in 1972 amounted to 20-25 percent of the housing starts that year -- to be well adapted to industrialized assembly. They are not subject to building codes, moreover, and thus offer unusual flexibility in materials selection and assembly techniques.
From page 93...
... And since the greatest economies in housing probably will stem from offsite assembly, novel materials seem likely to be tied to that method of construction. Needs in Consumer Goods, Production Equipment, Automation In addition to the preceding illustrative studies of materials in seven areas of impact, we have analyzed the qualitative responses to the COSMAT priorities questionnaire in terms of specific research needs in all nine of the areas surveyed.
From page 94...
... Once in useful form, the information can be printed out, visually displayed, or used to control a machine or servomechanism. Opportunities for improvement lie both in visual displays and in computer-controlled machines.
From page 95...
... It combines the knowledge and skills of materials scientists and engineers with those of the information community -mathematicians and statisticians, as well as computer hardware and software engineers. The economic and social implications of switching to automation in a given operation, moreover, can call also for the expertise of economists and social scientists Goal-Oriented Materials Research Bearing on Areas of National Impact COSMAT analyzed several thousand write-in comments from materials professionals to derive a list of goal-oriented research topics that rate high priority in the nine national areas of impact.
From page 96...
... Communications, Computers, and Control Memories; visual displays, semiconductors, thin films; integrated circuit processes, yields in large-scale integration, component reliability; optical communication systems; defect properties of crystals; chemical and surface properties of electronic materials; purification; crystal growth and epitaxy; joining techniques; contacts; high-temperature semiconductors. Consumer Goods Durability; visual displays; corrosion; mechanical properties; improved strengthto-weight packaging; recyclable containers; high-strength glass; plastics; plastic processing; composites.


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