Thickening kinetics of proeutectoid ferrite plates in Fe-C alloys

Thermionic electron emission microscopy was used to measure directly the thickening kinetics of proeutectoid ferrite sideplates in Fe-C alloys. These kinetics were found to be exceedingly irregular. During the first few seconds of growth, the thickening rate is 5 xl0-5±1 cm/s; afterwards it usually diminishes to 1 - 30 × 10-6 cm/s. As predicted by a general theory of precipitate morphology, thickening was shown to occur only by the ledge mechanism, despite the relatively poor matching of the austenite and the ferrite lattices. Ledges were observed to lengthen at rates controlled by the diffusion of carbon in austenite. Tent-shaped and other more complex surface relief effects, rather than the invariant plane strain relief, were found to predominate. These features are shown to be the expected result of a diffusional transformation occurring by means of a ledge mechanism. © 1975 American Society for Metals, The Melallurgical Society of AIME

Innovative engineering solutions and best practices to mitigate coastal risk

Engineering solutions are widely used for the mitigation of flood and erosion risks and have nowadays to face new challenges due to the expected effects induced by climate change in particular sea level rise and increase of storminess. This Chapter describes both active methods of mitigation based on the reduction of the incident wave energy, such as the use of wave energy converters, floating breakwaters and artificial reefs, and passive methods, consisting of increase in overtopping resistance of dikes, improvement of resilience of breakwaters against failures, and the use of beach nourishment as well as tailored dredging operations