As a man who has made notches (or more specifically pores) a major focus of his research activities in PM over the past couple of decades, Professor Paul Beiss was not averse to notching up the honour of receiving the Ausschuss für Pulvermetallugie's prestigious 'Skaupy Prize' for 2003, writes Bernard Williams. The prize was presented to Professor Beiss at the Hagen PM Symposium at the end of November 2003.

Dr Volker Arnhold (GKN Sinter Metals) in presenting his eulogy of Professor Beiss' contributions and achievements, said that he had spent 15 years in the PM industry before taking up his current post as Head of the Institute of Materials Science in the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University in 1994.

Vacuum sintering investigations

Paul Beiss joined the German PM company Sintermetallwerk Krebsöge in Radevormwald (now GKN Sinter Metals) as a young researcher in 1979. He first worked on vacuum sintering of PM high-speed steel and tool steels used for cutting tools, slitting knives, glass moulds, etc.

In 1983 he was promoted to Technical Manager of the company, and broadened his scope of research to include sintering atmospheres, development of master alloys to strengthen Fe-Cu materials, compaction modelling, and assessing the properties of green compacts.

In 1991 Paul Beiss was made general manager of Krebsöge's PM plant in Bad Brückenau where he spent three years before accepting his present academic post.

When he took up his professorial position as head of the Institute of Materials Science at RWTH Aachen he brought with him a wealth of experience and practical knowledge about PM. In the 10 years he has been in Aachen he has put much of this to good use by establishing a research group working on a broad range of PM materials - ferrous and non-ferrous - and initiating a number of industry-related research projects. Among these are the machining properties of PM stainless steels, green machining of warm compacted green compacts, porous metals, and the study of mechanical properties of PM steels.

Professor Beiss has indicated in previous publications that the mean stress sensitivity as a function of material strength has never been too convincing in fatigue testing of PM steels. He states that a rather straightforward consideration of the slopes of S-N curves in double logarithmic coordinates proves that there must be a parabolic relationship between the endurable pulsating and alternating stress amplitudes.

Experimental results support this supposition, he says, and could allow fatigue endurance data to be expressed mathematically. However, he believes there is still too much discrepancy in the existing data to allow this to be done.

More data needed

In his Skaupy Award presentation in Hagen entitled Mechanical Properties of PM Steels, Professor Beiss emphasised that while pore morphology has the greatest effect on mechanical properties of carbon-free PM steels, these properties do not necessarily follow the linear development of porosity. He also said that there was insufficient property data for heat-treated properties of PM steels, nor reliable property data on new PM materials such as sinter-hardening steel. Professor Beiss has chaired the German Ausschuss für Pulvermetallurgie (1995-1999), has been chairman of the EPMA PM Education Working Group, and is currently chairman of the EPMA's Industry Research & Development Working Group. He also organises "Introduction to PM" seminars, which take place alternately in Aachen and Dresden, and an annual two-day seminar on "Competing Near Net and Net Shaping Technologies" which takes place alternately in Düsseldorf and Stuttgart. In addition he has always been keen to endow his knowledge to students.

Fatigue in structural parts

PM events such as the EPMA Summer Schools and the Höganäs chair seminars held in Spain, Austria and Italy have benefited from his advice and he has been a prolific contributor to PM literature.

The author or co-author of more than 120 publications, he recently put together the new edition of the International Atlas of PM Microstructures (MPIF), and a substantial tome on Powder Metallurgy Data in the Landolt-Börnstein series published by Springer-Verlag. The main areas of data include, not surprisingly, fatigue properties of structural parts, compaction topics, tool materials, and porous parts.

Previous recent recipients of the Skaupy Prize have included Professor Waldemar Hermel, Fraunhofer IKTS (2000), Dr Hans-Dieter Kunze, Fraunhofer IFAM (2001), and Dr Hans-Peter Koch, Robert Bosch GmbH (2002).

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