SteCal: a powerful tool for improving the student engagement in the design and development of low-alloys steels for high performance applications

In this work, it is presented the use of a specific software known as SteCal 3.0 (Microsoft Windowsbased application) which is successfully employed as a didactic and instructional method for future students in Engineering Degrees (mostly Mechanical Engineering, Mechanical Design Engineering and Industrial Technologies Engineering, among others). First of all, it is important to remark that steel is one of the most important metallic materials in our society which can be widely used in a high variety of different sectors such as automotive, construction, structural, packaging or manufacturing, among others. One of the main reasons of this great multifunctionality is associated to its intrinsic properties such as a high mechanical resistance and hardness combined with a high toughness and easy formability. According to this, SteCal is very useful software for comparing the properties of several steels with different chemical composition, which can help to suggest the most appropriate composition for a specific application. As a function of the input experimental parameters (varying alloying elements), this program can help to the students a better comprehension on diverse metallurgical aspects obtainable with low-alloy steels such as thermal behaviour (austenizing temperature, eutectoid reaction, normalizing, quenching, tempering) as well as important concepts related to the resultant mechanical properties (martensitic structure, susceptibility to quench-cracking, hardness, Jominy End-Quench hardenability). Due to this, two different types of steel with different chemical composition are evaluated according to the designation from the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) such as AISI 1330 and AISI 4147, respectively. Finally, a better student engagement has been observed along all these years of implementation of this didactic software because the future students in Engineering Degrees can deep about theoretical and important concepts with the aim of designing steels with specific properties of high technological interest.