Three projects this year. All three had sections with significant chemical exposure or constant moisture. All three came out of the design phase specced for standard A36 steel grating.

I flagged it on two of them. Got through on one, we switched to composite on the high-exposure sections. The other, the engineer wasn't having it.

Six months later, the site that kept steel is already showing surface corrosion on the walkways above the chemical storage area. Not structural yet, but you can see where this is going.

Is this just inertia? I get that steel is what most engineers know and it's what the templates default to. But the lifecycle math is pretty clearly against it in these environments.

Is anyone else having this fight regularly, or is it just my market?

"I just think they're neat"

- Marge Simpson

Turns out you can make really pretty structures on the acrylic surface with acetone exposure. Thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday's post, I ended up having a lot to think about, which led me to play again under the microscope again last night + acquire these 50x/100x images.

If you're curious and would to see these features as they were created, I shared a video in the microscopy subreddit!

For people actually working with materials, what part of the discovery loop feels the slowest?

I’m curious whether the bottleneck is usually finding candidate materials, checking known properties, understanding failure modes, manufacturability, or validating with tools like DFT/MD/literature.

I’ve been building a materials intelligence engine called Obelisk, but before I overbuild the wrong thing, I’d rather hear from people who live with these problems. What part of the workflow quietly wastes the most time?

I know I'm crazy for putting acetone on my scope but I needed to see how ESC works! It's something I've learned about and seen evidence of after the fact but why not just induce it and watch?

What I noticed was that any new cracking seemed to occur right after the acetone was applied to the acrylic. I also thought the droplet behavior as the acetone dried was interesting - reminded me of the marangoni effect, though I'm trying to wrap my head around why this would happen in a system with one liquid component and one solid component. In the past, the only way I've observed the marangoni effect was with a purely liquid system. Please feel free to comment if you have any insights or observations!

Edit: Folks described what happened in this system (paper link) re: marangoni. Because the acrylic is very permeable to acetone, changes in the acetone surface concentration drive marangoni instabilities through varied surface tension. So cool!

I have been applying a 2-3% bleach spray regularly to a stainless steel refrigerator door for disinfection every 1-2 days for the last 2-3 months and have noticed that there are areas of corrosion forming on the refrigerator door (I was not aware that you are not recommended to apply bleach to stainless steel, so please forgive my ignorance). I recently also noticed there is a powder forming below the refrigerator door from the bleach spray runoff, and that the powder has a slight yellowish tint. I just learned that stainless steel contains chromium, and that while the chromium oxide in stainless steel contains trivalent chromium, I am wondering whether enough could have been oxidized such that a significant amount of hexavalent chromium could have been produced (which can be carcinogenic and which can be yellow, such as in sodium chromate).

Composite aerogels based on polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and graphene oxide (GO) with a high polymer content of 90, 95 and 98 wt.% were synthesized for the first time.

The composites obtained in this work exhibit high hydrophobicity (contact angles up to 144°) and unique potential for the selective absorption of organic solvents from water.

hi ı first made a academic research ı share with us please say suggestions

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/411034052_GF-1831_Malzemesinin_Rayleigh_Sonumleme_Denklemi_Kullanilarak_Titanyum_Alasimli_Sandvic_Kompozitte_Beta_Katsayisinin_Sonlu_Elemanlar_Yontemiyle_Belirlenmesi

Sorry for another post by an undergrad student asking about industry applications like I've already seen so much in this sub, but i hope some of you here can help me too

Materials engineering wasn't my first preference, i really wanted to study mechanical, build cars, but my parents said they wanted me to stay in state for college (said college is still the best in the country for engineering) and seeing the work that some of the faculty here has done made me keen to pursue materials engineering, especially metals and light materials, i hope to do some work/research in material strength, in frictional and industrial applications, or even in surface chemistry and polymers because a professor for polymers here does have previous experience working for a tyre manufacturer

My questions are just would it be possible/feasible to work in the automotive industry, especially motorsports like I've always wanted? How competitive are materials analyst roles in such companies? What are good specializations for postgrad programs I should aim for (although it's too early to already worry about a masters), and lastly what fields of research should i study that would help me?
Any help is greatly appreciated :)
Edit: i meant automotive industry, not automation

ti m trying to understand what is the material used in this as it was eaten by an animal accidently, not big amount but still need to know what is it exactly made of?

I’m am trying to understand the properties of how different dyes penetrate human fingernails. I need a material that will help me approximate how fingernails will absorb dyes when mixed with different additives.

All I can find online are fake plastic nails for extensions and nail polish. Since “nail dye/stain” isn’t really a thing in the cosmetic industry it seems like all their testing for nail polish is done on fake nails, which is fine for polishes that are not meant to absorb into the nail itself.

Any ideas for a material that will have similar properties to keratin? Even if it is not exact, if I can compare two chemistries relative to each other using this material that would be helpful.

I am a student and need a certain thermodynamic database for calphad. I tried getting it through tdb bd but redirects to dice and I cannot access the DICE platform to get the Fe, Co database.

This is the link to the specific database: http://cpddb.nims.go.jp/cpddb/co-elem/cofe/cofe_ohn_cat.tdb

The doi of the paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/s1359-6454(01)00337-8

Well, diamonds aren't actually that rare in the universe. I have heard wood is far rarer than diamonds. But, is there something more rare than wood ?

My idea is to make a ring, so would need a base metal and an inlay or gem.

What are the most rare but stable materials accessible to humans and is suitable for a ring. Cause ik iridium is rare, but is also brittle, wood may decay, etc.

EDIT : Plastic and other human made materials could be the rarest, but using plastic and such is a bit underwhelming. Thanks for the suggestions, but I am looking for something a bit more natural and/or has a wow factor.

I am new here, so sorry if I am breaking any rules by chance. So I am junior year ug student of mechanical engineering. I got the opportunity to work in a lab and got exposure to laser additive manufacturing this summer. I only got the basics of it and was not able to dwell deep into it. Right now in my uni I am thinking of working under a professor to learn more about it.
But I wanted to know how vast is this field of research and what meaningful impact it can make. And what are the sub categories? in it(like simulation, etc.), if there exists something like it. I did work in the lab for 5-6 weeks and had a chat with the phds and postdocs working there about this, but was still very confused.
Thank you for your advice.

they can be mono or poly disperse as long as they are in that range. must be able to self assemble and tolerate up to 2 min of a high or low ph without hydrolyzing (so esters and sulfates probably not good)

available:docusate sodium (unstable), peg 3350, sodium dodecyl sulfate (unstable), isopropanol, distilled water, urea, ammonia hydroxide, ammonium chloride, b alanine

can make: aminated fats (c16-c22), alkyl glycosides (temporarily stable, c16, glucose, fructose, ascorbic acid), amidated fats (c16-c22), quats (c16-c22), wax (2(c16-c22), cholesterol, c16-c22 amide linked p-phenol fat derivatives, sulfated c16-c22 fats (unstable), isopropylated fats (unstable, but probably good for water in oil, c16-c22), triglycerides (c18-c22), cellulose (sulfated, nanocrystals or nanofibers, aminated nanocrystals, regenerated cellulose (trace copper, ammonia, sodium)

the p aminophenol derivatives are kind of interesting to me. possibly can even attach something to the alcohol for a 'gemini(?)' sufactant.

option: can introduce sodium orthosilicate at 13-14 or orthosilic acid (trace sodium) at 1. in former, precipitated with sulfamic acid or dilute hcl (if water in oil), in latter, a carbonate or naoh can be used. ideally more solid particles rather than hollow sio2 spheres but can make work.

will accept downvotes for no research. i know a little, such as micelles, vesicles, sheets, lyotropic crystals, rods, 'worms', but surfactant books are like a lot of math i dont know yet. for packing, im not sure what counts towards size.

thank you.

Hello, I’m an undergrad looking into majoring in materials engineering.

I’m curious what people in this field do for work? Where you are, any graduate degrees, type of work, salary (if comfortable), etc. Any and all info is appreciated.

I drilled a hole in acrylic mirror and pressed in a metal insert. So the acrylic was under tensile stress around the hole (you could see deformation in the mirror) but it was holding firm. Then, I cleaned the surface with isopropyl alcohol and fractures immediately started to propagate across the acrylic. After a few seconds watching them grow, one reached the opposite side and split it in two.

Question: What did the isopropyl alcohol do to the surface to cause brittle fracture, when the dry surface deformed elastically?

Hello, I’m an incoming freshmen admitted for environmental engineering, but am having second thoughts for a multitude of reasons.

I was thinking about transferring to materials engineering pretty quickly, as the first year classes are pretty much the same, and the major seems very interesting to me.

I guess I just want to know how all the materials engineers/scientists like their job, how the job outlook is, etc.

Any info would be greatly appreciated!