Metallurgical Engineering (MT)

What is Metallurgical Engineering??
Metals and mineral products surround us everywhere, every day – at home, on the sports field, in our autos and SUVs, at school and in the office or factory. They form the major components of buildings; aircraft, trains, ships, and even our mountain bikes; computer hard drives and artificial hips; cutlery, cookware, and utensils; coins and jewelry; trumpets, tubas and French horns; handguns and caissons; chainlink or barbed wire fencing; plumbing pipes and electrical wiring – the uses are endless! It is this strong dependence of our society on metals that gives the profession of metallurgical engineering its sustained importance in the modern world. Economic and technical progress into the 21st century will depend in large part on further advances in metal and mineral technology, in spite of the emergence of many new and exotic materials during the latter half of the 20th century. Metallurgical Engineering is the science and technology of processing materials to extract, refine and recycle metals. These processes include the development and use of metals and alloys that have specific physical properties. Metallurgical Engineering has three distinct branches:
Metallurgical Engineering has six distinct sections for GATE Exam
Thermodynamics and Rate Processes:
Laws of thermodynamics, activity, equilibrium constant, applications to metallurgical systems, solutions, phase equilibria, Ellingham and phase stability diagrams, thermodynamics of surfaces, interfaces and defects, adsorption and segregation; basic kinetic laws, order of reactions, rate constants and rate limiting
steps; principles of electro chemistry- single electrode potential, electrochemical cells and polarizations, aqueous corrosion and protection of metals, galvanic corrosion, crevice corrosion, pitting corrosion, intergranular corrosion, selective leaching, oxidation and high temperature corrosion – characterization and control;
heat transfer – conduction, convection and heat transfer coefficient relations, radiation, mass transfer – diffusion and Fick’s laws, mass transfer coefficients; momentum transfer – concepts of viscosity, shell balances, Bernoulli’s equation,friction factors.
Extractive Metallurgy:
Minerals of economic importance, comminution techniques, size classification,flotation, gravity and other methods of mineral processing; agglomeration, pyro-,hydro-, and electro-metallurgical processes; material and energy balances; principles and processes for the extraction of non-ferrous metals – aluminium, copper, zinc, lead, magnesium, nickel, titanium and other rare metals; iron and steel making – principles, role structure and properties of slags, metallurgical coke,blast furnace, direct reduction processes, primary and secondary steel making, ladle metallurgy operations including deoxidation, desulphurization, sulphide shape control, inert gas rinsing and vacuum reactors; secondary refining processes including AOD, VAD, VOD, VAR and ESR; ingot and continuous casting; stainless steel making, furnaces and refractories.

 

Physical Metallurgy:
Crystal structure and bonding characteristics of metals, alloys, ceramics and polymers, structure of surfaces and interfaces, nano-crystalline and amorphous structures; solid solutions; solidification; phase transformation and binary phase diagrams; principles of heat treatment of steels, cast iron and aluminium alloys; surface treatments; recovery, recrystallization and grain growth; structure and properties of industrially important ferrous and non-ferrous alloys; elements of X-ray and electron diffraction; principles of optical, scanning and transmission electron microscopy; industrial ceramics, polymers and composites; introduction to electronic basis of thermal, optical, electrical and magnetic properties of materials; introduction to electronic and opto-electronic materials.
Mechanical Metallurgy:
Elasticity, yield criteria and plasticity; defects in crystals; elements of dislocation theory – types of dislocations, slip and twinning, source and multiplication of dislocations, stress fields around dislocations, partial dislocations, dislocation interactions and reactions; strengthening mechanisms; tensile, fatigue and creep behaviour; super plasticity; fracture – Griffith theory, basic concepts of linear elastic and elastoplastic fracture mechanics, ductile to brittle transition, fracture toughness; failure analysis; mechanical testing – tension, compression, torsion,hardness, impact, creep, fatigue, fracture toughness and formability.
Manufacturing Processes:
Metal casting – patterns and moulds including mould design involving feeding, gating and risering, melting, casting practices in sand casting, permanent mould casting, investment casting and shell moulding, casting defects and repair; Hot, warm and cold working of metals; Metal forming – fundamentals of metal forming processes of rolling, forging, extrusion, wire drawing and sheet metal forming, defects in forming; Metal joining – soldering, brazing and welding, common welding processes of shielded metal arc welding, gas metal arc welding, gas tungsten arc welding and submerged arc welding; Welding metallurgy, problems associated with welding of steels and aluminium alloys, defects in welded joints; Powder metallurgy – production of powders, compaction and sintering; NDT using dye-penetrant, ultrasonic, radiography, eddy current, acoustic emission and magnetic particle methods.
Engineering Mathematics:
Linear Algebra: Matrices and Determinants, Systems of linear equations, Eigen values and Eigen vectors.
Calculus: Limit, continuity and differentiability; Partial derivatives; Maxima and minima; Sequences and series; Test for convergence; Fourier series.
Vector Calculus: Gradient; Divergence and Curl; Line, Surface and volume integrals; Stokes, Gauss and Green’s theorems.
Differential Equations: Linear and non-linear first order ODEs; Higher order linear ODEs with constant coefficients; Cauchy’s and Euler’s equations; Laplace transforms; PDEs –Laplace, one dimensional heat and wave equations.
Probability and Statistics: Definitions of probability and sampling theorems, conditional probability, Mean, median, mode and standard deviation; Random variables; Poisson, normal and binomial distributions; Correlation and regression analysis.
Numerical Methods: Solutions of linear and non-linear (Bisection, Secant, Newton-Raphson methods) algebraic equations; integration by trapezoidal and Simpson’s rule; single and multi-step methods for differential equations.