**Preface to "Heat Treatment of Steels"**

This book is a compilation of recent articles presenting developments in the processing, innovative heat treatments, corrosion and mechanical properties characterisation of steels, including ultra-high strength steel families.

The subjects are multidisciplinary and embrace interdisciplinary work covering physical metallurgy and processes, reporting on experimental and theoretical progress concerning microstructural evolution during the heat treatment of steels, including a review concerning heat-transfer phenomena when quenching metals at high temperatures.

This book can provide a source for data and presents information on the emerging processes and thermal treatments of steels that have been proposed and discussed, with interesting results on complex heat treatments and precipitation phenomena.

Some of the results can be a base for an effective application in the industrial application of automotive and high-stress structures, but obviously there are still many challenges to overcome.

As Guest Editors of this Special Issue, we really hope that all scientific results in this Special Issue can contribute to the advancement of the future research of steels and find application in real industrial environments and markets.

We would like to warmly thank the authors of the research articles in this Special Issue for their contributions and all of the reviewers for their efforts in ensuring high-quality publications.

Finally, thanks to the editors of *Metals* and to Kinsee Guo, the Assistant Editors and assistants for their valuable and continuous support during the preparation of this volume.

> **Claudio Testani, Andrea Di Schino** *Editors*
