Prospects of metal science in the automotive industry

Abstract

In January 1932, the first trucks rolled off the assembly line at the Gorky Automotive Plant (GAZ). In the past 65 years, the makes of trucks and cars and the way they are manufactured have changed more than once, but the range of metal-science problems that have to be tackled at the GAZ has remained unchanged. These are the choice of materials, heat-treatment schedules, and test techniques. Now that new economic relations have come to govern the market and the opportunity exists for user-oriented control over the quality of the metal supplied, the GAZ metal scientists have a stronger leverage through which they can assure the efficient use of metals and thus to promote metal science, one of the basic sciences serving the automotive industry.