A new route towards strong yet ductile metals via architecting heterogeneities in both structure and metastability is presented. Such heterogeneities are generated and manipulated in a standard stainless steel using a heterogeneous phase transformation (het-PT) strategy, in which focused laser patterning is applied to stimulate site-specific phase transformations. The het-PT processed steel contains periodically arranged stripes of strong martensite and ductile austenite with different grain sizes and metastability. The resulting structural heterogeneity leads to a desirable strain gradient and heterogeneous deformation-induced martensitic transformation during deformation, which effectively accommodate strain localization and enhance work hardening capability in the het-PT-processed steel. These unique features result in an enhanced balance between strength and ductility, outperforming both homogeneously ultrafine-grained and coarse-grained counterparts. The het-PT strategy is expected to be applicable to tailoring structural heterogeneity and metastability in other steels and metals.

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Steels with medium manganese (Mn) content (3∼12 wt-%) have emerged as a new alloy class and received considerable attention during the last decade. The microstructure and mechanical response of such alloys show significant differences from those of established steel grades, especially pertaining to the microstructural variety that can be tuned and the associated micromechanisms activated during deformation. The interplay and tuning opportunities between composition and the many microstructural features allow to trigger almost all known strengthening and strain-hardening mechanisms, enabling excellent strength-ductility synergy, at relatively lean alloy content. Previous investigations have revealed a high degree of microstructure and deformation complexity in such steels, but the underlying mechanisms are not adequately discussed and acknowledged. This encourages us to critically review and discuss these materials, focusing on the progress in fundamental research, with the aim to obtain better understanding and enable further progress in this field. The review addresses the main phase transformation phenomena in these steels and their mechanical behaviour, covering the whole inelastic deformation regime including yielding, strain hardening, plastic instability and damage. Based on these insights, the relationships between processing, microstructure and mechanical properties are critically assessed and rationalized. Open questions and challenges with respect to both, fundamental studies and industrial production are also identified and discussed to guide future research efforts.

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Mo is widely used as an effective microalloying element to improve mechanical performance of interphase precipitation steels, but the precise role of Mo in interphase precipitation behavior is not fully understood. In this contribution, interphase precipitation behavior in a series of Ti-Mo-bearing low carbon steels is systematically studied, and the role of Mo in interphase precipitates and its coarsening behavior is revisited. It is found that (Ti, Mo)C precipitates instead of TiC are formed in the Mo-containing alloys, and the average site fraction of Mo in (Ti, Mo)C is almost independent of the bulk Mo content. Moreover, the number density of interphase precipitates can be substantially enhanced by a minor addition of Mo, albeit it does not further rise with increasing the bulk Mo content. This is because the Mo fraction in (Ti, Mo)C rather than the bulk Mo content governs the driving force for precipitation nucleation and the interfacial energy of the (Ti, Mo)C/α and (Ti, Mo)C/γ interfaces. In addition to the reduced interfacial energy, decrease of Ti trans-interface diffusivity has been identified as another key reason for the enhanced carbide coarsening resistance in Mo-containing alloys.

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Wastewater with high salinity is one of the major challenges for conventional wastewater treatment. Although nitrogen management is vital for wastewater treatment, efficient strategies for nitrogen recovery and removal from saline wastewater remain challenging. Here we propose microbial ammonium assimilation to achieve efficient nitrogen removal and recovery into biomass from saline wastewater without gaseous nitrogen release opposite to the conventional wastewater treatment,. We find one marine bacterium Psychrobacter aquimaris A4N01 with the ability to form sedimentary granular biofilms that can be engineered to construct an efficient ammonium-assimilating microbiome followed the bottom-up design. We demonstrate that the microbiome removes ammonium through assimilation without reactive nitrogen intermediates and gaseous nitrogen emission, according to the functional gene abundance and nitrogen balance. More than 80% of ammonium, total nitrogen and total phosphorus are removed and recovered into biomass, with more than 98% of COD removed from saline wastewater. As one prototypic microbe to form ammonium-assimilating biofilms, Psychrobacter aquimaris A4N01 plays key role in nutrient metabolism and microbiome construction. We stress that ammonium assimilation with a clear and short pathway is a promising method in future saline wastewater treatment and sustainable nitrogen management.@en

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/786748/results https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5f1716216&appId=PPGMS @en

Over many decades, significant efforts have been made to improve the strength-elongation product of advanced high strength steels (AHSSs) by creating tailored multi-phase microstructures. Successive solid-state phase transformations for steels with a well selected chemical composition turned out to be the key instrument in the realisation of such microstructures. In this contribution, we first provide a brief review of the desired microstructures for Transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP), Carbide-free Bainitic (CFB), Quenching & Partitioning (Q&P) and Medium Manganese steels followed by comprehensive discussions on the phase transformations to be used in their creation. The implications for the steel composition to be selected are addressed too. As the presence of the right amount and type of metastable retained austenite (RA) is of crucial importance for the mechanical performance of these AHSSs, special attention is paid to the important role of successive solid-state phase transformations in creating the desired fraction and composition of RA by suitable element partitioning (in particular C and Mn). This critical partitioning not only takes place during final cooling (austenite decomposition) but also during the back transformation (austenite reversion) during reheating. This review aims to be more than just descriptive of the various findings, but to present them from a coherent thermodynamic / thermo-kinetic perspective, such that it provides the academic and industrial community with a rather complete conceptual and theoretical framework to accelerate the further development of this important class of steels. The detailed stepwise treatment makes the review relevant not only for experts but also metallurgists entering the field.

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The international trade flow of e-commerce goods have reached unprecedented volumes. Ensuring undisrupted flow of cross-border eCommerce goods has become one of the top priorities for customs administrations around the world. Customs has a role in safeguarding public values such as safety and security, revenue collection, and stimulation of the economy. Customs administrations are now looking into innovative ways to be able to fulfil their duties for controlling the trade flows while at the same time not hindering trade. But in a broader sense, other government agencies also have responsibilities for safeguarding public values such as product and consumer safety or sustainability and are currently confronted with these eCommerce flows. While eCommerce is a phenomenon that is widely studied in business literature, it is largely unexplored both in research and practice how governments can understand and engage with these eCommerce developments. In this study we focus on the issue revenue collection related to cross-border eCommerce goods. Empirically, our paper builds on insights from the PROFILE EU project, which focuses on the use of data analytics for customs. Theoretically we build on research on control mechanisms in eCommerce platforms and digital trade infrastructures. We present an eCommerce platforms evaluation framework for customs. The evaluation framework consists of two distinct perspectives (i.e. a data analytics and a partnership perspective) that customs can explore when defining their engagement strategies with eCommerce platforms. We limited our study to the interactions of customs with eCommerce platforms and the issue of revenue collection. Further research can study the safeguarding of a wider range of public values by a range of government organisations to account for effects of the vast growth in international flows of goods via eCommerce platforms, such as monitoring product safety and sustainability effects.@en

As an increasing volume of international trade activities around the world, the amount of cross-boarder import declarations grows rapidly, resulting in an unprecedented scale of potentially fraudulent transactions, in particular false commodity code (e.g., HS Code). The incorrect HS Code will cause duty risk and adversely impact the revenue collection. Physical investigation by the customs administrations is impractical due to the substantial quantity of declarations. This paper provides an automatic approach by harnessing the power of machine learning techniques to relief the burden of customs targeting officers. We introduced a novel model based on the off-the-shelf embedding encoder to identify the correctness of HS Code without any human effort. Determining whether the HS Code is correctly matched with commodity description is a classification task, so the labelled data is typically required. However, the lack of gold standard labelled data sets in customs domain limits the development of supervised-based approach. Our model is developed by the unsupervised mechanism and trained on the unlabelled historical declaration records, which is robust and able to be smoothly adapted by the different customs administrations. Rather than typically classifying whether the HS Code is correct or not, our model predicts the score to indicate the degree of the HS Code being correct. We have evaluated our proposed model on the ground-truth data set provided by Dutch customs officers. Results show promising performance of 71% overall accuracy.@en

The interaction between moving α/γ interfaces and interphase precipitated (IPd) carbides during the austenite (γ) to ferrite (α) and the ferrite (α) to austenite (γ) transformation has been systematically investigated through cyclic phase transformation experiments for a 0.1C-1.5Mn alloy containing 0.1 wt% Niobium (Nb) and its Nb-free counterpart. Shifts in the critical reaction temperatures during continuous heating and cooling are observed, which are attributed to the pinning force (PF) originating from the IPd carbides present. By applying the Gibbs energy balance (GEB) model to analyze experimental results, the PF was derived to be about 15 J/mol for the α→γ transformation and about 5 J/mol for the γ→α transformation, respectively, both of which are quite small compared to chemical driving force of phase transformations. Moreover, various modified Zener pinning equations have also been used to predict the PF, and it was found that these values are comparable with those obtained from experiments, which suggests that the classical Zener theory still has promising potential for carbide-interface interaction analysis.

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