La Cementazione dell' Acciaio

Abstract

IN the present work, Prof. Giolitti has collected together the important experimental results obtained by his fellow-workers during the last four years relative to the cementation of steel. At the same time, he has presented an exhaustive review of the subject from its scientific and technical aspects. The chemical nature of the process of cementation (in which term case-hardening is included) has been the subject of many controversies, and it cannot be said that the mechanism of the transport of carbon is even now understood. Prof. Giolitti subjects the extensive literature of the question to a critical review, which does not appear to omit any work of importance, English and German memoirs being examined as thoroughly as those in Italian and French. This part of the book might, perhaps, have been somewhat condensed by the omission of repetitions, but it forms an excellent source of reference for a class of facts of great importance for the general theory of metallic alloys. Ths chapter in which the results of previous investigations are summed up scarcely gives sufficient attention to the fact, now fully established, that carbon diffuses in the solid as a carbide, and not in the free state.

La Cementazione dell' Acciaio.

Dr. Frederico Giolitti. Pp. xi + 506. (Torino: Unione Tipo-grafico-Editrice Torinese, 1912.)