University of Science and Technology Beijing
At University of Science and Technology, Beijing, a Gleeble 1500 installed in 1987 has been kept very busy running more than 1,500 hours per year in support of a wide variety of educational and research programs.
Professor Dang Zijiou heads the Gleeble laboratory and leads a team of three women who not only help to educate undergraduate and graduate students, but who are also conducting major research programs, as well as developing new and interesting ways to use the Gleeble. In her words, The Gleeble is our good friend. We keep it busy, and it serves us very well.
She adds, In the past three years, we have used 95% of the functions mentioned on the machine capabilities menu.
The results are impressive: during the past three years, 66 of the 400 students and graduate students enrolled at the University of Science and Technology were sent to the Gleeble laboratory to receive training and write their master's or Ph.D. theses.
During the same period, a number of short research projects were completed and two extensive research programs were begun. The first, sponsored by the Ministry of Metallurgy, is aimed at improving the productivity of continuous casters and will involve taking critical measurements of hot ductility and ultimate stress for some 35 different kinds of steel. The second, supported by the State Commission of Education, is basic research into the resistance of metals to deformation and will seek to characterize how strain rates, strain values, and temperature influence the formability of steel.
In addition, Professor Dang and her team have made improvements in rolling simulation and thermal/mechanical fatigue tests and have designed a new set of jaws for simulating cutting procedures.
One of the reasons for the team's successes is the diversity of its members' backgrounds: Professor Dang has a background in mechanical engineering; Ms. Yan has a background in electronics; and Ms. Wu's background is in the physics of metals. When they are faced with a challenge in using the Gleeble to thermally or mechanically simulate new test parameters, they can take an interdisciplinary approach to solving it.
In 1987, Ms. Yan spent two months at DSI headquarters learning how to maintain and calibrate the Gleeble. As a result, she frequently helps other Chinese research organizations to maximize use of their Gleeble systems by making sure they are in optimum working order and by training their operators. In the view of Professor Li Jingbo, Vice President at the University of Science and Technology at Beijing, there are three key factors in the success of the Gleeble: the high quality of the Gleeble, the excellence of Professor Dang's work, and the availability of Ms. Yan as a source of technical support. In addition he cites excellent cooperation and a good relationship between the technical institutions in Beijing and the staff at DSI.
Professor Li concludes, "Since 1984, we have purchased more than 30 major pieces of equipment for our university, which specializes in materials sciences. The Gleeble is one of the very best."
This article first appeared in the Gleeble® Newsletter — Summer 1991.
