The British Iron and Steel Research Association or BISRA, formed in 1944, was the research arm of the British steel industry. It had headquarters in London, originally at 11 Park Lane, later moved to 24 Buckingham Gate, with Laboratories in Sheffield on Hoyle Street, [1] Swansea, Teesside, and Battersea. The organization was created by Sir Charles Goodeve, who remained its director until his retirement in 1969. Roger Eddison was hired as a manager shortly after BISRA's founding. BISRA's research has been responsible for much of the automation of modern steelmaking. BISRA were pioneers of digital computing in the steel industry. [2]
BISRA was funded 15% by a grant from the government of the United Kingdom, and 85% by a cooperative of several steelmaking companies. [3]
British Steel was a major British steel producer. It originated from the nationalised British Steel Corporation (BSC), formed in 1967, which was privatised as a public limited company, British Steel plc, in 1988. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The company merged with Koninklijke Hoogovens to form Corus Group in 1999.
Steel is an alloy made up of iron with typically a few tenths of a percent of carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant need typically an additional 11% chromium. Because of its high tensile strength and low cost, steel is used in buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, trains, cars, machines, electrical appliances, and weapons. Iron is the base metal of steel. Depending on the temperature, it can take two crystalline forms : body-centred cubic and face-centred cubic. The interaction of the allotropes of iron with the alloying elements, primarily carbon, gives steel and cast iron their range of unique properties.
Steelmaking is the process of producing steel from iron ore and/or scrap. In steelmaking, impurities such as nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and excess carbon are removed from the sourced iron, and alloying elements such as manganese, nickel, chromium, carbon and vanadium are added to produce different grades of steel. Limiting dissolved gases such as nitrogen and oxygen and entrained impurities in the steel is also important to ensure the quality of the products cast from the liquid steel.
The cementation process is an obsolete technology for making steel by carburization of iron. Unlike modern steelmaking, it increased the amount of carbon in the iron. It was apparently developed before the 17th century. Derwentcote Steel Furnace, built in 1720, is the earliest surviving example of a cementation furnace. Another example in the UK is the cementation furnace in Doncaster Street, Sheffield.
Puddling is a step in the manufacture of high-grade iron in a crucible or furnace. It was invented in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution. The molten pig iron was stirred in a reverberatory furnace, in an oxidizing environment, resulting in wrought iron. It was one of the most important processes of making the first appreciable volumes of valuable and useful bar iron without the use of charcoal. Eventually, the furnace would be used to make small quantities of specialty steels.
Sir Charles Frederick Goodeve was a Canadian chemist and pioneer in operations research. During World War II, he was instrumental in developing the "hedgehog" antisubmarine warfare weapon and the degaussing method for protecting ships from naval mines.
Sir Owen Haddon Wansbrough-Jones KBE, CB, was a leading academic chemist and soldier whose career included serving as Chief Scientist to the British Ministry of Supply.
The Iron and Steel Institute was an English association organized by the iron trade of the north of England. Its object was the discussion of practical and scientific questions connected with the manufacture of iron and steel.
Before 1800 A.D., the iron and steel industry located where raw material power supply and running water were easily available. after 1950, iron and steel industry began to located on large areas of flat land near sea ports. The history of the modern steel industry began in the late 1850s. Since then, steel has become a staple of the world's industrial economy. This article is intended only to address the business, economic and social dimensions of the industry, since the bulk production of steel began as a result of Henry Bessemer's development of the Bessemer converter, in 1857. Previously, steel was very expensive to produce, and was only used in small, expensive items, such as knives, swords and armor.
The Ravenscraig steelworks, operated by Colvilles and from 1967 by British Steel Corporation, consisted of an integrated iron and steel works and a hot strip steel mill. They were located in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, Scotland.
steeluniversity is a collection of free and non-free e-learning resources and interactive simulations covering major aspects of ironmaking and steelmaking. It provides the underlying scientific, metallurgical, and engineering principles and environmental aspects of the production, use, and recycling of steel. These internet-delivered resources are aimed at undergraduate students of metallurgy, materials science and engineering subjects as well as graduate employees in the steel industry supply chain.
Robert Durrer (1890–1978) was a Swiss engineer who invented the basic oxygen steelmaking process. The process was successfully tested by Durrer in 1948. A team led by Dr Theodor Eduard Suess in Austria adapted the process and scaled it to industrial size, after which it was commercialized by VÖEST and ÖAMG.
The Iron and Steel Industry in Scunthorpe was established in the mid 19th century, following the discovery and exploitation of middle Lias ironstone east of Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England.
The Materials Processing Institute is a research centre serving organisations that work in advanced materials, low-carbon energy and the circular economy. The Institute is based in Tees Valley in the northeast of England.
The AJAX furnace was a modification of the tilting open hearth furnace that used blown oxygen to improve productivity. The process was used in the UK during the 1960s at a time of transition from open hearth to oxygen based steel making.
A Kaldo converter is a rotary vessel oxygen based metal refining method. Originally applied to the refining of iron into steel, with most installations in the 1960s, the process is (2014) used primarily to refine non ferrous metals, typically copper. In that field, it is often named TBRC, or Top Blown Rotary Converter.
John Frank Elliott (1920–1991) was an American professor of metallurgy who made significant contributions to the science of pyrometallurgy during his long career at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Bal Raj Nijhawan, was an Indian metallurgist, author and the first Director of Indian origin of the National Metallurgical Laboratory, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). He was a recipient of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, the highest Indian science award, which he received in 1964 in the Engineering sciences category. The Government of India honoured him in 1958, with the award of Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award for his services to the nation.
Skinningrove steelworks is a steel mill in Skinningrove, North Yorkshire, England. The business was formed in 1874 as the Loftus Iron Company, after a liquidation of the company reformed in 1880 as the Skinningrove Iron Company. The works expanded from producing only pig iron to include steel production in the early 20th century, with mills specialising in long products including railway rail. As part of the business the company constructed a jetty at Skinningrove, and owned an ironstone mine in Loftus.
Roger Tatham Eddison was an English practitioner of Operations Research. He was Joint Editor of Operational Research Quarterly from 1950 to 1958. He was President of the Operational Research Society 1966-1967.