La Revue de Métallurgie is forever associated with the name of the great French Scientist who created it in 1904: Henry Le Chatelier. On the occasion of the centenary of the Revue, the authors draw an overview of its history that is intimately linked with the one of Metallurgy. More recently, la Revue de Métallurgie has been able to evolve permanently with a view to afford a better service to its readers. Other French journals have merged with the Revue and an electronic version has been introduced in 2000 as a tribute to the new century. Nevertheless other circumstances must now be allowed for, in an ever more global World with new European industrial groups and universities or engineering schools ever more focused on the international. From now on, Industry and Science, the preferred couple of Henry Le Chatelier, must be considered on a European basis. This shows the way for la Revue de Métallurgie in the Future.

From his own experience, the author discusses the need of Metallurgy for theoretical models and their limits. The development of simple but less accurate models has provided a semi-quantitative approach of many complex metallurgical phenomena that has proven useful to orientate research as well as to afford interpretation-based prediction. Such models can be validated within a narrow range only. These approximate models could be substituted for by elaborated and comprehensive calculations that would provide reliable predictions with the help of ever more efficient computers. It remains a difficult task to take satisfactorily into account every internal parameter and boundary condition of a global system. Furthermore, any new observation requests another calculation that gives a clear picture but no comprehensive understanding of the underlying phenomena. Combining experiments, interpretation and prediction modeling along with few dedicated calculations may eventually allow further progress in such a complex domain as Metallurgy.

The research on structural materials, notably in metallurgy, was the pioneering discipline of the materials science. Besides “traditional” materials as metallic alloys and polymers which are following up their progresses, the materials of wide uses and large diffusion, like concrete, rubber, textiles, wood, paper and cardboard are now benefiting of the advanced researches allowed by the progresses of the investigation and modelling methods able to provide information on their great complexity linked to the fact they generally are mixtures. High strength materials gain from active researches dealing with experimental studies as well as modelling of the production processes, multiscale approaches of the structures, properties, behaviour and optimized selection providing both scientific advancement and improved applications. “System-materials” are another field of stuctural materials, often in connexion with functionnal materials. Artificially built by putting together elements going from atoms to fibers or particles of different sizes: composites, smart materials, structural nanomaterials have opened the way to wide research perspectives and exiting applications. Interdisciplinar researches on optimized mechanical behaviour, chemical and topological analysis of the microstructure and processes modelling, multiphysics modelling of the behaviour of structures and properties are developed thanks to the advancement of the available instrumentation and calculation facilities. Studies on the implementation of these materials providing an improved control of the performances of the produced parts and objects need a renewed stimulation. Data bases concerning thermodynamic properties as well as kinetics ones, mechanical and thermophysical properties are necessary input data for these approaches and improvements. A continuous enrichment of these bases is of vital importance.


The authors introduce the multi-scale modelling approach of service properties and recent results that best reflect the complex behaviour of industrial materials. They describe the main modelling tools and highlight the essence of experimental checking at the appropriate scale. The authors describe in details the progress that has been accomplished in the prediction of the energy of atom-scale defects in steels, as essential input data to model the kinetics of microstructure evolutions under radiation. The authors present the multi-scale prediction of mechanical properties along with the particular issue of the nuclear fuel.

50 years ago, ECSC programmes have introduced collaborative scientific and technical research on a European scale. They have created the foundations for the European Research framework programmes (FP). The ECSC treaty has expired. A new research programme, complementing the FP of the European Union: the Research Fund for Coal and Steel, is born. The Steel Technology Platform will secure its full coordination with all other available steel research instruments. All of this constitutes a very tangible and lively legacy of the ECSC, in a more global world, in the light of new priorities of the European Union, of the objectives of Lisbon and Barcelona, and finally of the today reaffirmed strategic importance of the knowledge-based economy.

The Steel Industry today is a large and capital-intensive industry, which has reached a high level of sophistication, complexity and efficiency. This benefits the consumer, as the price of steel has been steadily decreasing, which helps bring down the price of consumer goods. Steelmaking has therefore become focused on a small number of process routes, which connect together standard, mainstream and high performance technologies. It seems therefore that the industry is very mature and that little leeway is available for change, as past progress has already brought it close to physical limits. This is a view of the Steel Industry, which is contemporary and central to the strategy of this business. A Steel Mill that does not operate within the paradigms of the mainstream state-of-the art technologies will be doomed by economic troubles and eventual bankruptcy. However, Steel or Iron have remained at the core of civilization for roughly 3,000 years and the model of the Steel Industry discussed above is only roughly 30 years old. There have been many more different models in the past, from Prehistory to History, and it is likely that even more will emerge in the Future. Indeed, it is reasonable to assume that Iron and Steel will continue to be used for a very long time. The present paper discusses Steel from the standpoint of an Enduring Material and the Steel Industry from that of a Cumulative Technology and explores how these two important concepts have led to industry changes in the Past and will most likely contribute to more changes in the Future.

The major changes that have occurred in the steel industry are described along three periods: the thirty years boom-period after World War II; the zero growth period (1973-1983); the last period, from 1983 to nowadays. Under the heavy influence of the overall trends of world economy, these periods can be distinguished, for the steel industry, by the different levels of priority for productivity, for specific flat carbon steel product developments or for environmental protection. The intricate relations that prevail between the development of new processes, innovative product metallurgies and the requirements expressed by steel customers are highlighted.

Stainless steels have sustained a continuous growth for these 50 years, based on their outstanding corrosion resistance properties. Their corrosion performance has been ever improved for a large range of environments. New grades with higher static or dynamic mechanical properties afford high quality parts at lower cost with modern fabrication technology. In the future, stainless steel should find further application in the transportation and in the water distribution industries. This growth might be impeded by the EU classification of alloys with over 1% nickel. Attention that is focused nowadays on nickel, may later on be drawn upon all metallic alloys, whose distinctive features should rather be acknowledged and which should benefit from the support of a common strategy to be agreed upon by all stakeholders.

Today, after a fifteen years period of progressive evolution, the design of new products from the metallurgy of special steels and alloys area has become fundamentally based on the intensive use of modelling devices covering both microstructure design and process description. These tools, today well implemented inside industry companies, combined with conventional experimental investigation lead to faster innovation results, steadier solutions, and contribute to increase performance and competitiveness.

The annual production of Arcelor is 44 millions tons of steel. Amongst these 44 millions of tons, 8 are used in the construction market of the 15 earlier Members of the European Union, for industrial buildings, multi-storey buildings and bridges. In the European Union, Steel has a major share of industrial buildings in all Member States while for multi-storey buildings, the national market shares of steel are not uniform. The share of steel for the multi-storey buildings market is over 50% in the United Kingdom, Sweden or Norway and below 30% in the rest of Europe. Thus, there is a large potential for steel. This market could be gained through improved material properties or new products in order to answer the new trends of the market towards long span, service integration and flexibility. The paper addresses four topics pertaining to construction with steel: high strength steel grades, Arcelor cellular beams, floor systems, fire safety.