**About the Editor**

**Pello Uranga** is the Associate Director of the Materials and Manufacturing Division at CEIT and an Associate Professor at Tecnun, the School of Engineering at the University of Navarra. He received his Ph.D. degree in Materials Engineering in 2002 from the University of Navarra. Currently, his research activity is focused on the thermomechanical processing and the microstructural evolution modeling of steels. He has published over 150 technical papers in international journals and conferences, receiving five international awards. He is an active member of AIST (Association of Iron and Steel Technology) and TMS (The Mineral, Metals and Materials Society) professional associations, as well as a university program evaluator for ANECA (Spain) and ABET (USA).

### *Editorial* **Advances in Microalloyed Steels**

#### **Pello Uranga 1,2**


Received: 22 February 2019; Accepted: 27 February 2019; Published: 28 February 2019

#### **1. Introduction**

Microalloyed steels are one of the core alloy steels in the development of modern advanced high-strength steels. Current developments are mostly focused on the optimization of their chemical composition and process parameters to achieve the microstructures needed to fulfill the most challenging mechanical properties and performance requirements. Understanding and controlling the microstructural parameters on the basis of chemical composition strategies (i.e., proper microalloying selection) and process optimization, require a proper comprehension of the mechanisms acting during hot working and final cooling. The development of new modelling tools and powerful characterization techniques will allow the scientific community to gain fundamental knowledge and evolve towards successful products for end-users.

#### **2. Contributions**

The present Special Issue on Advances in Microalloyed Steels includes two review papers [1,2] and nine research papers [3–11]. In all of them, different combinations of microalloying elements are analyzed in terms of process, microstructure, and mechanical property modification. The alternatives in microalloying are clearly reflected in terms of the grades studied in the different papers. Nb is present in many of them [1,2,5,7,8,10,11], alone or in combination with Mo [2,5,10], Ti [8], and V [10]. Two papers deal with Ti–Mo combinations [6,9], and the last two articles analyze the addition of V [4] and Al [3] as microalloying elements. Microalloyed grades are currently used in different sectors such as energy and structural and automotive sectors. The structural and automotive sectors are the most represented in this Special Issue.

Even if some papers cover specific performance problems and optimization alternatives for industrial processing conditions [1,2,7,11], most of the papers deal with more fundamental analyses of the relationship between microstructure and mechanical properties [4–6,8,10]. Some papers also analyze the effect of microalloying on hot and cold working behaviors [3,9].

#### **3. Conclusions and Outlook**

The development of microalloying technology has been impressive in the last 50 years. Nowadays, microalloyed steel grades can compete, with their lower costs, with other alloys with high-strength qualities. These developments, though, request a high level of intensive research and transferability to the industry and the understanding of basic mechanisms, which with a proper processing control, will ensure the reliability of these grades under the most challenging operational conditions. The interest and high level of the contributions published in this Special Issue ensure that the link between research and industry will not break anytime soon.

As a guest editor, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the authors for submitting their manuscripts and sharing their latest developments. I also would like to encourage them and the rest of the community to keep on researching and publishing in steel-related topics, as their relevance to industry and society is and will be vital for progress in the future.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


© 2019 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
