Introduction to materials science and engineering

By Prof. Rajesh Prasad | IIT Delhi

Learners enrolled: 641 | Exam registration: 26

ABOUT THE COURSE :This course is designed as a first introduction to microstructure and mechanical properties of engineering materials for undergraduate engineering students. The focus will be on clear presentation of basic fundamentals of structure and defects of crystalline materials. This will then be used to understand the transformations, heat treatments and mechanical behavior of structural materials. The course will also include several classroom and laboratory demonstrations. The course will also be useful as an introduction to materials science for engineers and scientists in industry, research labs and academic institutions.

INTENDED AUDIENCE : Undergraduate students from all disciplines in engineering. Could be useful for students of solid state physics and solid state chemistry as well as engineers in industry looking for fundamentals of materials science

PREREQUISITES: Science at school level equivalent to 10+2 of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), India.

INDUSTRY SUPPORT: Any industry concerned with materials, in particular automobile and manufacturing industries. Condensed versions of this course have been offered at Maruti Udyog Limited, Gurugram, and Terminal Ballistic Research Lab of DRDO, Chandigarh, India.

Summary

Course Status :	Upcoming
Course Type :	Core
Language for course content :	English
Duration :	12 weeks
Category :	Metallurgy and Material science & Mining Engineering Minor in Metallurgy Minor in Materials Science
Credit Points :	3
Level :	Undergraduate
Start Date :	20 Jan 2025
End Date :	11 Apr 2025
Enrollment Ends :	27 Jan 2025
Exam Registration Ends :	14 Feb 2025
Exam Date :	04 May 2025 IST

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.

Page Visits

Course layout

Week 1: Lattice and crystal, 7 crystal systems, 14 Bravais lattices, Symmetry.

Week 2: Miller indices of directions and planes, Weiss Zone Law, Bragg's Law, Close-Packed structures: CCP, HCP.

Week 3: Voids in close-packed structures, Solid solutions: interstitial, substitutional, ordered, disordered. Hume-Rothery rules. Graphene, graphite and diamond.

Week 4: Carbon nanotubes, Buckminsterfullerene.Ionic Solids: NaCl, CsCl, ZnS, BCC vs CsCl. Amorphous solids. Polymers: thermoplastic, thermosets, tacticity, copolymers, crystallinity.

Week 5 : Defects: zero-, one- and two-dimensional. Vacancies. Dislocations: edge, screw and mixed. Burgers vectors and burgers circuit. Constancy of Burgers vector. Elastic energy of a dislocation.

Week 6 : Dislocation cannot end abruptly inside a crystal, dislocation loop, dislocation node, dislocation motion: glide, climb and cross slip. 2D defects: free surfaces, grain boundaries, twin boundary, stacking faults, tilt and twist boundaries, ball bearing model.

Week 7 : Phase diagrams. Phases and components. Phases present in the system. Composition of phases: Tie-Line rule. Proportion of Phases: Lever Rule. Microstructure Evolution. Invariant reactions: eutectic, eutectoid, peritectic, peritectoid. Gibbs phase rule. Fe-C diagram.

Week 8 : Fe-C diagram (Continued). Eutectoid, hypoeutectoid and hypereutectoid steels. Diffusion: Fick's First and Second Laws. Error function solution of Fick's second law. Atomistic mechanisms of diffusion: interstitial and substitutional diffusion. Diffusion paths: lattice, grain boundary, dislocation and surface. Steady vs. unsteady state diffusion.

Week 9 : Phase transformation. Nucleation: Homogeneous and heterogeneous. Nucleation and capillary rise. Growth and overall transformation. TTT diagrams. Heat treatment of steels. TTT diagrams of eutectoid steels.

Week 10 : Quenching and martensite, Austempering and Bainite. Tempering and tempered martensite. Residual stresses and quench cracks. Marquenching and Martempering. TTT diagram of hypoeutectoid, hypereutectoid and alloy steels. Hardenability of steels. Glass ceramics. Mechanical behaviour of materials. Tensile test. Plastic deformation and crystal structure. Slip. Resolved shear stress and critical resolved shear stress. Schmid's law.

Week 11 : CRSS: theory vs. experiment. Strengthening mechanisms: strain hardening, grain size hardening, solid solution hardening and age hardening. Dislocation density. Frank-Read source. Annealing of cold-worked materials: Recovery, Recrystallisation, Grain Growth.

Week 12: True stress and true strain.Creep. Effect of stress and temperature. Creep mechanisms. Composites: isostrain and isostress modulus. Fracture. Ductile and brittle fracture. Role of crack size: Griffith's criterion. Stress concentration. Ductile-to-brittle transition. Enhancing fracture resistance. Toughening of glass: tempering and ion-exchange. Fatigue. Sub-critical crack growth.

Books and references

• V. Raghavan, Materials Science and Engineering: A First Course, 6 th Edn., PHI Leraning, 2015.
• W.D. Callister, Materials Science and Engineering: An Introduction, 6th Edn., Wiley, 2003.

Instructor bio

Prof. Rajesh Prasad

IIT Delhi

Professor Rajesh Prasad (B.Tech., IIT-BHU, Varanasi; M.E., IISc, Bangalore; Ph.D., Cambridge) began teaching Materials Science at University of Cambridge as a graduate teaching assistant for the undergraduate course Crystalline Materials. He now has about three decades of experience in teaching materials science courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels at the Indian Institutes of Technology, at Varanasi, Kanpur and Delhi. He received A.A. Krishnan Gold Medal for his M.E. thesis at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He has been awarded a Teaching Excellence Award in 2012 by the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. In 2013, he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the Department of Metallurgical Engineering, IIT-BHU, Varanasi.

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.

The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).

Date and Time of Exams: May 4, 2025 Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.

Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.

The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.

Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 8 assignments out of the total 12 assignments given in the course.

Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100

Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

Please note that assignments encompass all types (including quizzes, programming tasks, and essay submissions) available in the specific week.

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75. If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.

Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Madras .It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.

Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.

Once again, thanks for your interest in our online courses and certification. Happy learning.

- NPTEL team