Plenary Presentations

The Role of Technology in the Global Primary Aluminum Industry Today and in the Future

The presentations will be followed by a panel discussion with the opportunity for the audience to ask questions and provide their comments to the presenters. This is an opportunity that anyone involved with the primary aluminum industry can’t afford to miss.

The following speakers have committed to participate event sponsored by the TMS Light Metals Division, the TMS Aluminum Committee, and the Aluminum Association:

ALUMINUM PLENARY SESSION SPEAKERS
CYNTHIA CARROLL President/CEO Alcan Primary Metal Group Canada	TRULS GAUTESEN President Hydro Aluminium Primary Metal Norway	WAYNE HALE, SR. Vice President of Operations SUAL Holding Russia	XIANGMIN LIU Vice President Aluminum Corporation of China (Chalco) China	VALERY MATVIENKO Managing Director, Aluminum Division Rusal Russia	BERNT REITAN Vice President Alcoa USA

More Plenary Presentations

PLENARY SPEAKER

DAVID J. SROLOVITZ Director Princeton Materials Institute USA

From the Computational Thermodynamics and Phase Transformations Symposium: "Anisotropic Grain Boundary Properties" by David J. Srolovitz

Date: Monday, February 14
Time: 8:30 am
Location: Moscone West Convention Center, Room 3005
Grain boundary structure and properties depend on five distinct crystallographic variables: three to describe the relative orientation of one grain with respect to the other and two to describe the boundary plane. The evolution of polycrystalline structures may depend upon the anisotropy in grain boundary mobility, grain boundary free energy/stiffness, efficiency with which the boundary absorbs defects. In this presentation, we focus upon grain boundary properties that are important for quantitative modeling of the evolution of polycrystalline microstructures as a function of these crystallographic parameters (i.e., grain boundary mobility and grain boundary stiffness). We discuss how to determine these properties using molecular dynamics simulations. Finally, we compare predicted grain boundary dynamical properties with experimental measurements to draw some conclusions on what controls the rate at which polycrystalline structures evolve.

PLENARY SPEAKER

ALAN I. TAUB Executive Director, R&D General Motors Corporation USA

From the 6th Global Innovations Symposium—Trends in Materials and Manufacturing Technologies for Transportation Industries: "Automotive Research: Technical Trends and Challenges" by Alan I. Taub

Date: Monday, February 14
Time: 2:00 pm
Location: Moscone West Convention Center, Room 2009
The population of the earth stands above 6.3 billion people today and in another 15 years will approach 7.5 billion. As world population rises, vehicle ownership is also expected to climb dramatically. In order to sustain increasing numbers of vehicles, the automotive industry must address important challenges in several key areas: energy, emissions, safety, congestion, and affordability. This talk will cover General Motors’ current strategies on how to address these challenges, highlighting developments in advanced propulsion, vehicle electronics, lightweight and smart materials, and agile manufacturing. These technologies are key to enable the industry to extend the significant benefits of personal mobility to people around the globe.

PLENARY SPEAKER

JAMES A. SPEAROT Director, Chemical and Environmental Sciences Laboratory General Motors R&D Center USA

From the 6th Global Innovations Symposium—Trends in Materials and Manufacturing Technologies for Transportation Industries: "The Hydrogen Economy–Materials Challenges and Opportunities" by James A. Spearot

Date: Monday, February 15
Time: 3:45 pm
Location: Moscone West Convention Center, Room 2009
Recent debate in both government and technical forums has focused on the value, the possibility, and the timing of meeting future transportation fuel demands by use of hydrogen generated from renewable sources of primary energy. The justifications for and the criticisms against development of renewable energy supplies and hydrogen-fueled propulsion systems are reviewed, and the technical hurdles to be overcome in creating such a future vision are identified. If the vision of a hydrogen-fueled transportation system is to become reality, significant material inventions and developments will be required. The opportunities for critical materials research programs in the areas of hydrogen generation, fuel cell development, and hydrogen storage are described. The status of General Motors’ progress in development of hydrogen-fueled, fuel cell-powered vehicles is used to demonstrate the potential that a clean, renewable-hydrogen fuel-based transportation system can provide in meeting societal goals.

PLENARY SPEAKER

EDUARD ARZT Max-Planck-Institut for Metals Research and Institut fur Metallkunde University of Stuttgart Germany

From the Biological Materials Science and Engineering Symposium: "Biological and Artificial Attachment Devices: Lessons for Materials Scientists from Flies and Geckos" by Eduard Arzt

Date: Wednesday, February 16
Time: 9:30 am
Location: Moscone West Convention Center, Room 3009
This talk will describe an interdisciplinary study involving materials scientists, biologists, and physicist aimed at elucidating the correlation between structure and performance of attachment devices in insects, spiders, and geckos. In all of these cases, adhesion is mediated by the interaction of finely-structured contact elements with the different substrates. Local mechanical properties and adhesion forces are measured by nanomechanical test methods and compared with predictions based on theoretical contact mechanics. For example, it has been possible for the first time to measure the adhesion of single gecko spatulae, with dimensions of 200 nm, to selected substrates by atomic force microscopy. Structure, size, and shape of the contact elements are found to play important roles; in particular the principle of "contact splitting" has been identified: finer contact elements (down to submicron level) produce larger contact forces in heavier animals. The actual dimensions of the contact elements follow exactly the theoretical predictions, a relationship that covers 6 orders of magnitude in animal mass from the fruit fly to the gecko! From our findings, important conclusions can be drawn on the optimal design of artificial contact elements. The talk will present first prototype adhesive surfaces produced with this insight and identify their technical limits by introducing "adhesion mechanism maps". These developments have led to the design of artificial micro-attachment systems ("biomimicry") which are potentially useful in micro-technology.

PLENARY SPEAKER

SUBRA SURESH Head, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Ford Professor of Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA

From the Biological Materials Science and Engineering Symposium: "Single-cell Nanomechanics and Human Disease States" by Subra Suresh

Date: Tuesday, February 15
Time: 9:00 am
Location: Moscone West Convention Center, Room 3009
The mechanical response of living cells and subcellular cytoskeleton can undergo dramatic alterations due to biochemical changes introduced by the progression of human diseases. In this presentation, we provide experimental results on systematic alterations to the elastic properties of human red blood cells parasitized in vitro by Plasmodium falciparum malaria. By recourse to optical tweezers experiments, we extract direct force versus displacement relationships for the cell and examine contributions to cell elasticity from specific proteins transported to the membrane from the parasite. Continuum and molecular-level computational simulations of the deformation of red blood cell are also performed to quantify the nanomechanics of cell response. The mechanical properties of changes to cell deformability from P. falciparum infestation are also compared and contrasted with similar results for the P. vivax parasite. Finally, the similarities and differences in cell elasticity and disease states between malaria and human pancreatic cancer are also examined.

PLENARY SPEAKER

JULIAN VINCENT Chair of Biomimetics, Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Bath United Kingdom

From the Biological Materials Science and Engineering Symposium: "Mechanical Properties of Biological Materials" by Julian Vincent

Date: Monday, February 14
Time: 8:30 am
Location: Moscone West Convention Center, Room 3009
It seems to me that the mechanical properties of biological materials are of interest to the engineer for 3 main reasons: What characteristics do they have? Why and how? How can we benefit from this information? The most versatile material is probably the cuticle of arthropods, which has to be skeleton, skin, and sensor, providing support, flexibility, sensitivity, protection, waterproofing, absorption, locomotion, etc. In providing this it is impossible to separate structure and material properties. The properties herefore have to be understood at the level of chemical bonding (epitaxy of chitin-protein interactions via silk-like conformations; incorporation of heavy metals), physical chemistry (control of stiffness achieved by control of water content), micro-morphology (fibre orientations; volume fractions), macromorphology (control of buckling by folding stiffeners), and function (wing foldings, mechanisms for drilling holes). The benefit comes from comparing the design philosophy of the arthropod with what we would do given our technical background and experience. These turn out to be very different (there’s only a 10% overlap—by design or coincidence) suggesting that 90% of biological problem-solving remains to be explored and exploited. The last part of the talk will therefore be devoted to techniques of biomimetic data-mining and how to organize biological information in a way which will aid creativity and innovation.