> The new technique involved repeatedly twisting a sample of 304 austenitic stainless steel in a machine in certain ways. This led to spatially grading the cells that made up the metal, resulting in the build-up of what the team describes as a submicron-scale, three-dimensional, anti-crash wall.
Interesting. Not a metallurgist but this takes advantage of stainless steels natural tendency to work harden. e.g. if you have ever broken a paperclip or other piece of steel by bending it back and forth until it fatigues, fractures, and beaks off. That happens in soft standard steels like A36 (edit forgot to finish this...) However, in stainless steel instead of a fracture forming at the bends crease, it hardens. As you try to bend it again, it bends in a new place as the original crease has hardened.
> Such improvements, the team claims, could allow products made using the metal to be up to 10,000 times more resistant to fatigue.
Very bold claim that if true is a game changer. My concern is how does this process scale to large complex structural pieces? Assuming since this internal structure will be ruined by annealing it must be performed after final shaping of the material. Welding should not be effected, especially low heat effect zone processes like laser and electron beam as you account for material alteration from welding during design.
I wish someone like Columbus/Reynolds/Tange could catch on this. It'd be awesome a road bike made of fancy/extra durable stainless steel tubing, lugged, horizontal top tube and that classic geometry but with disc brakes and thru axles.
They caught on, but with more appropriate stainless alloys. Columbus has XCr, Reynolds has 931. Either can be brazed, or silver soldered into lugs, or TIG welded. Cinelli does mass production of the bike you're describing, minus the lugs.
304 can't be optimized to a point it'll compete with the vast range of other stainless steels that already exist. Something else will always be more corrosion resistant, or stronger, or tougher. 304 exists on price. It's quick, common, and cheap. This process makes 304 expensive, uncommon, and slower to produce. The proven concept is what's carrying value here.
Why though? Cr-Mo steel tubing is already superior to 304 stainless in every relevant measure, except surface corrosion. In particular this article discusses fatigue behavior, and Cr-Mo has a (much) higher fatigue limit than 304.
This is also true WRT knife steels. Old, simple carbon based steels are much stronger than most stainless steels. They tend to bend rather than chip or break (when abused). They do rust and do have less edge retention than some stainless steels (such as S90V), but otherwise they are generally stronger.
Strength very rarely matters in knife blades, unless you use knives as pry bars (strength determines the force required to either break the blade or cause a permanent plastic deformation of the blade, i.e. to permanently bend the blade).
What matters is the compromise between hardness (good for edge retention) and toughness (required to avoid chipping).
Many alloyed steels (especially with chromium and vanadium) allow a better compromise than simple carbon steels, i.e. either a higher toughness at equal hardness or a higher hardness at equal toughness.
When you do not specify simultaneously hardness and toughness, simple carbon steels may seem good enough, because they can be made to be either very hard or very tough.
If you cut only very soft things, like fish meat without bones, a very hard carbon steel blade (like a traditional Japanese yanagiba) will not have any disadvantage versus an alloyed steel blade. When you want a more versatile knife, an alloyed steel blade will be superior.
I'll guarantee my UHC 1080 cleaver will slam a good distance through your stainless steel knife edge-on. Your chosen steel has toughness but it lacks in actual strength.
Totally. Just curious why the above wanted a stainless bike. If you want a steel road bike with disc brakes and thru-axles you can absolutely order one right now. I myself ride a Soma Wolverine with Tange Prestige Cr-Mo tubing, flat mount disc brakes, and thru-axles.
If you wanted a bike that didn't necessarily need painting, you can order a bike like that in titanium tubing instead.
For me it was getting the fucking things into and out of car racks or trunks. Picking a bike up is not hard. Brandishing it at chest or head height is something else entirely.
> In testing the metal after treatment, the research team found it boosted its strength by a factor of 2.6 while also cutting strain due to ratcheting by two to four orders of magnitude compared to untreated stainless steel. Such improvements, the team claims, could allow products made using the metal to be up to 10,000 times more resistant to fatigue.
LOL; that second sentence mainly just explains that four orders of magnitude means 10,000.
I sometimes watch machinists and blacksmiths on youtube.
One of the things I've become more aware of lately is the fact that hardened steel eats through cutting tools like candy, so the solution is to anneal the steel, do most of the shaping, harden it again (temper it for as much as 24 hours in a very smart oven that slowly slowly drops the temps), and then finish the piece with sanding and grinding tools instead of cutting tools.
I wonder if this treatment survives annealing and hardening cycles or if that just destroys the structure.
Dan Gelbert with his micron accuracy milling machine and lathe. He has stuff on air bearings, positive pressure rooms with pH and humidity control measures.
You've got the heat cycles for annealing, hardening, and tempering confused. The slow cooling is for annealing, hardening requires a fast cool from rather hot and is a very different process from tempering, which is a short soak at a comparatively low but tightly controlled temperature.
Pretty fascinating work. My layman understanding is they twist the steel in certain ways to create microscopic structures or patterns in the steel that then resist later deformation.
It sounds kind of like the ripstop lines sown into X-Pac materials - when a rip or flaw occurs, its (ideally) bounded by the structures sown into the material.
I was recently watching a Dan Gelbart video where he mentioned hydrogen-induced cracking of steel (HTHA) discovery during the development and scaling-up of the Haber-Bosch process.
I think this is discussed in "the new science of strong materials" by J.E. Gordon, (1968) alongside why some aluminium alloys get stronger if you "age" them before use.
You think a country of 1.4 billion people is utterly incapable of metallurgy, simply because some of their products are intentionally designed as cheaply as possible, to be sold on a market that wants products sold as cheaply as possible?
Are you also an expert on 3D nano-scale material science? It sounds like you only know a couple terms about stainless steel on a macro scale.
> The reviewers of Science were not and unless proven otherwise Science is a serious publication.
Serious publication or not (which, BTW, is an instance of the Argument from Authority fallacy), they aren't immune to the problem of junk science.[1]
> That's plain racism.
Not the OP, but I believe the intended reading of "Chinese" in this context is "product of the present Chinese social and economic system" and has nothing to do withe race or ethnicity (e.g. it wouldn't apply to Taiwan). The present Chinese system has a significant problem with bad science.[2]
There is no intended reading that makes "Chinese metallurgy is an oxymoron" a sensible thing to post any place where you want to have a halfway reasonable conversation with strangers.
> Serious publication or not (which, BTW, is an instance of the Argument from Authority fallacy), they aren't immune to the problem of junk science.[1]
I'm not sure anyone was saying they're immune to it, but their reputation does lend them credibility when compared to a random HN commenter that says stuff like "Chinese metallurgy is an oxymoron"
There's a pervasive thought in the English speaking world that Chinese people are unable to achieve creativity and are only capable of copying western innovation.
Yeah - 304 is nasty stuff for work hardening, too. I wonder if what they're really describing is a very specific amount of work hardening that improves certain mechanical processes. It can't be hardened/tempered since it's austenitic, but maybe selective work hardening provides some benefits.
It is sad to me that much of Asia went straight to the "publish or perish" phase of science. There once was an era when science was about pushing the edge of our understanding of nature rather than just pushing the edge of what is publishable for promotion. In the west that goal has been slowly lost (like many things it became infotainment), and some still strive for new knowledge. It's not that good research doesn't go on, it's just very product/engineering focused and business profit dominated. The majority of academic stuff everywhere that is not immediately verified is enshittified to varying degrees.
So this article still gives me both hope that it is real, and sadness that it probably isn't.
I don't know much about stainless, but work hardened alloy steel has benefits and isn't less reliable. For example, the rolled splines on automotive shafts.
> The new technique involved repeatedly twisting a sample of 304 austenitic stainless steel in a machine in certain ways. This led to spatially grading the cells that made up the metal, resulting in the build-up of what the team describes as a submicron-scale, three-dimensional, anti-crash wall.
Interesting. Not a metallurgist but this takes advantage of stainless steels natural tendency to work harden. e.g. if you have ever broken a paperclip or other piece of steel by bending it back and forth until it fatigues, fractures, and beaks off. That happens in soft standard steels like A36 (edit forgot to finish this...) However, in stainless steel instead of a fracture forming at the bends crease, it hardens. As you try to bend it again, it bends in a new place as the original crease has hardened.
> Such improvements, the team claims, could allow products made using the metal to be up to 10,000 times more resistant to fatigue.
Very bold claim that if true is a game changer. My concern is how does this process scale to large complex structural pieces? Assuming since this internal structure will be ruined by annealing it must be performed after final shaping of the material. Welding should not be effected, especially low heat effect zone processes like laser and electron beam as you account for material alteration from welding during design.
I'd like to have some of these stainless steel paperclips. Sounds like a good fidget toy.
I wish someone like Columbus/Reynolds/Tange could catch on this. It'd be awesome a road bike made of fancy/extra durable stainless steel tubing, lugged, horizontal top tube and that classic geometry but with disc brakes and thru axles.
They caught on, but with more appropriate stainless alloys. Columbus has XCr, Reynolds has 931. Either can be brazed, or silver soldered into lugs, or TIG welded. Cinelli does mass production of the bike you're describing, minus the lugs.
304 can't be optimized to a point it'll compete with the vast range of other stainless steels that already exist. Something else will always be more corrosion resistant, or stronger, or tougher. 304 exists on price. It's quick, common, and cheap. This process makes 304 expensive, uncommon, and slower to produce. The proven concept is what's carrying value here.
Why though? Cr-Mo steel tubing is already superior to 304 stainless in every relevant measure, except surface corrosion. In particular this article discusses fatigue behavior, and Cr-Mo has a (much) higher fatigue limit than 304.
This is also true WRT knife steels. Old, simple carbon based steels are much stronger than most stainless steels. They tend to bend rather than chip or break (when abused). They do rust and do have less edge retention than some stainless steels (such as S90V), but otherwise they are generally stronger.
That's just not true, though. Stainless (e.g. AEB-L) is up to four times tougher than simple low-alloy carbon steel (e.g. 1095). See https://knifesteelnerds.com/2021/10/19/knife-steels-rated-by... for example.
High hardness simple carbon steels do have their place in knives, but what you're saying is factually incorrect.
Toughness is not the same as strength.
Strength very rarely matters in knife blades, unless you use knives as pry bars (strength determines the force required to either break the blade or cause a permanent plastic deformation of the blade, i.e. to permanently bend the blade).
What matters is the compromise between hardness (good for edge retention) and toughness (required to avoid chipping).
Many alloyed steels (especially with chromium and vanadium) allow a better compromise than simple carbon steels, i.e. either a higher toughness at equal hardness or a higher hardness at equal toughness.
When you do not specify simultaneously hardness and toughness, simple carbon steels may seem good enough, because they can be made to be either very hard or very tough.
If you cut only very soft things, like fish meat without bones, a very hard carbon steel blade (like a traditional Japanese yanagiba) will not have any disadvantage versus an alloyed steel blade. When you want a more versatile knife, an alloyed steel blade will be superior.
"Stainless (e.g. AEB-L) is up to four times tougher than simple low-alloy carbon steel (e.g. 1095). See https://knifesteelnerds.com/2021/10/19/knife-steels-rated-by... for example."
I'll guarantee my UHC 1080 cleaver will slam a good distance through your stainless steel knife edge-on. Your chosen steel has toughness but it lacks in actual strength.
Totally. Just curious why the above wanted a stainless bike. If you want a steel road bike with disc brakes and thru-axles you can absolutely order one right now. I myself ride a Soma Wolverine with Tange Prestige Cr-Mo tubing, flat mount disc brakes, and thru-axles.
If you wanted a bike that didn't necessarily need painting, you can order a bike like that in titanium tubing instead.
Thanks for that - Titanium bikes look amazing when bare metal.
Reynolds 501 is CrMo. But 531, which was more coveted, swapped the chrome for manganese, making it lighter at the same mechanical numbers.
The stainless steel construction helps with flux dispersal when you hit 88mph.
> Cr-Mo steel tubing is already superior to 304 stainless in every relevant measure
If you exclude cost as a relevant measure.
Stainless is more expensive as well
Now that I have an aluminum bike I can’t go back - lugging it up and down stairs is so much nicer.
For me it was getting the fucking things into and out of car racks or trunks. Picking a bike up is not hard. Brandishing it at chest or head height is something else entirely.
> In testing the metal after treatment, the research team found it boosted its strength by a factor of 2.6 while also cutting strain due to ratcheting by two to four orders of magnitude compared to untreated stainless steel. Such improvements, the team claims, could allow products made using the metal to be up to 10,000 times more resistant to fatigue.
LOL; that second sentence mainly just explains that four orders of magnitude means 10,000.
he who makes a <fool> of himself, gets rid of the pain of being <smarty pants>
I sometimes watch machinists and blacksmiths on youtube.
One of the things I've become more aware of lately is the fact that hardened steel eats through cutting tools like candy, so the solution is to anneal the steel, do most of the shaping, harden it again (temper it for as much as 24 hours in a very smart oven that slowly slowly drops the temps), and then finish the piece with sanding and grinding tools instead of cutting tools.
I wonder if this treatment survives annealing and hardening cycles or if that just destroys the structure.
Dan Gelbert with his micron accuracy milling machine and lathe. He has stuff on air bearings, positive pressure rooms with pH and humidity control measures.
https://youtu.be/HWPYoE1SNnA
You've got the heat cycles for annealing, hardening, and tempering confused. The slow cooling is for annealing, hardening requires a fast cool from rather hot and is a very different process from tempering, which is a short soak at a comparatively low but tightly controlled temperature.
Yarp.
> very smart oven
They just have PID temperature controllers with ramp/soak timers. They're really cheap these days.
Paper in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt6666
The regularity of this microstructure is incredible, even in comparison to additively manufactured steels.
https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/2025/creating-an-anti-crash....
Pretty fascinating work. My layman understanding is they twist the steel in certain ways to create microscopic structures or patterns in the steel that then resist later deformation.
It sounds kind of like the ripstop lines sown into X-Pac materials - when a rip or flaw occurs, its (ideally) bounded by the structures sown into the material.
This sounds like very very careful work hardening.
It totally is.
I was recently watching a Dan Gelbart video where he mentioned hydrogen-induced cracking of steel (HTHA) discovery during the development and scaling-up of the Haber-Bosch process.
I think this is discussed in "the new science of strong materials" by J.E. Gordon, (1968) alongside why some aluminium alloys get stronger if you "age" them before use.
Some medieval swords were made in a similar way (twisting and re-flattening the billet many times).
[flagged]
You think a country of 1.4 billion people is utterly incapable of metallurgy, simply because some of their products are intentionally designed as cheaply as possible, to be sold on a market that wants products sold as cheaply as possible?
Are you also an expert on 3D nano-scale material science? It sounds like you only know a couple terms about stainless steel on a macro scale.
> I am highly suspicious of this.
The reviewers of Science were not and unless proven otherwise Science is a serious publication.
> I hate to say this, but I personally believe that "Chinese metallurgy" is an oxymoron. The word "Chinesium" didn't come out of nowhere.
That's plain racism.
> The reviewers of Science were not and unless proven otherwise Science is a serious publication.
Serious publication or not (which, BTW, is an instance of the Argument from Authority fallacy), they aren't immune to the problem of junk science.[1]
> That's plain racism.
Not the OP, but I believe the intended reading of "Chinese" in this context is "product of the present Chinese social and economic system" and has nothing to do withe race or ethnicity (e.g. it wouldn't apply to Taiwan). The present Chinese system has a significant problem with bad science.[2]
[1] http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?jou%3dS...
[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6
"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity."
but I believe the intended reading of "Chinese"
There is no intended reading that makes "Chinese metallurgy is an oxymoron" a sensible thing to post any place where you want to have a halfway reasonable conversation with strangers.
I can't access the PDF from that Springer link - what are the numbers for other countries?
> Serious publication or not (which, BTW, is an instance of the Argument from Authority fallacy), they aren't immune to the problem of junk science.[1]
I'm not sure anyone was saying they're immune to it, but their reputation does lend them credibility when compared to a random HN commenter that says stuff like "Chinese metallurgy is an oxymoron"
There's a pervasive thought in the English speaking world that Chinese people are unable to achieve creativity and are only capable of copying western innovation.
It's weird, and it's racist.
> It's weird, and it's racist.
Also demonstrably wrong if you look at something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions
Yeah - 304 is nasty stuff for work hardening, too. I wonder if what they're really describing is a very specific amount of work hardening that improves certain mechanical processes. It can't be hardened/tempered since it's austenitic, but maybe selective work hardening provides some benefits.
(p.s., I sure hate milling 304 parts)
It is sad to me that much of Asia went straight to the "publish or perish" phase of science. There once was an era when science was about pushing the edge of our understanding of nature rather than just pushing the edge of what is publishable for promotion. In the west that goal has been slowly lost (like many things it became infotainment), and some still strive for new knowledge. It's not that good research doesn't go on, it's just very product/engineering focused and business profit dominated. The majority of academic stuff everywhere that is not immediately verified is enshittified to varying degrees.
So this article still gives me both hope that it is real, and sadness that it probably isn't.
I don't know much about stainless, but work hardened alloy steel has benefits and isn't less reliable. For example, the rolled splines on automotive shafts.