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INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING C H E M I S T R Y
Val. 19, N O . 10
CHEMISTRY’S CONTRIBUTION TO
AUTOMOTIVE TRANSPORTATION Papers presented before the symposium of the Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry at the 74th Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Detroit, hlich., September 5 to 10, 1927
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Introduction By T. A. Boyd, Chairman
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OW largely were the long flights of Lindbergh, Chamberlain, Maitland, and Byrd aided by chemistry? To what extent is the ordinary motorist indebted to chemical science? Just what have chemistry and its allied sciences done to make all automotive transportation possible? What can chemistry still contribute to automotive travel? These are the questions with which this symposium is concerned. Problems in the Making of a Machine
There are two problems in the making of any machine: (1) How shall it be made? (2) Of what shall it be made? I n the parlance of the engineer, these are designated, respectively, as the problem of design and the problem of materials. Although these two problems appear to be separate and distinct, there is really an intimate relationship between them. They are closely related in that the properties of the materials available for construction have a large influence in determining what the design of any machine shall be, or in setting the limits for its construction. I n other words, the way a machine is made depends a great deal upon the material available. Thus, Charles F. Kettering has pointed out that, in large measure, the automobile has been made possible by three materials-gasoline, rubber, and alloy steels. It is reasonable to suppose that, in making the motor car possible, these materials have also had a large influence upon its form or design. Gasoline has contributed the concentrated energy that moves the motor car. The power plant of the automobile has been built around gasoline. And so the form and size of the engine, as well as of the car itself to a large extent, have been determined by those properties that are peculiar to gasoline. By putting cushions of air underneath its wheels, rubber has made it possible for the automobile to be driven at reasonable speeds, without shaking both car and passenger to pieces. The rubber tire has influenced the strength and the weight of the car’s component parts, the gear ratio of its axle, the size of its engine, and many of its other parts as well. I n reality, the design of the whole automobile has been affected by rubber. The most outstanding contribution made to the automobile by alloy steels is the cutting tools that are used for shaping its multitude of individual parts. Alloy-tool steels make a large contribution to the durability and the cheapness of the motor car, because they enable the more than ten thousand pieces of which each automobile consists to be shaped with great rapidity and exactness. A most valuable and necessary complement to alloy-tool steels are the abrasives, by means of which automobile parts are ground out of the hardest steel with a speed and a precision that is almost unbelievable.
Debt of Automotive Transportation to Chemistry
It is in the materials used in fabricating automotive vehicles and in operating them that chemistry and its allied sciences, such as metallurgy and ceramics, have made their contribution to automotive transportation. And to the extent that materials affect design-which is’to a very great degree, indeed-chemistry has also influenced the form of the automobile, the airplane, and other vehicles of transportation. It happens that the basic materials used in constructing automotive vehicles are produced largely by industries other than the automotive. These contributing industries are usually old and familiar ones, which send only a portion of their output-although it is often a very large portionto the manufacturer of automotive vehicles. The contributions of the chemist to many of the products of these supporting industries have been very large. But, because the materials used in making automotive vehicles are gathered from many individual industries, some of which may seem to be but remotely connected with automotive transportation, it is probable that few people, even within the chemical profession, realize how largely automotive transportation is really indebted to chemistry. A partial list of materials used in motor cars is given in the following table: Material Used In Motor Cars in 1926a PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL MATERIAL AMOUNT U. S. PRODUCTION Pounds 14 Iron and steel 9,700,000,000 25 Aluminum 50,000,000 12.7 250,000,000 Copper 21 Tin 33,400,000 13 7 220,000,000 Lead 4.3 55,000,000 Zinc 28 Piickel 9,250,000 8 4.7 Rubber 607,232,000 Square feel 50 Plate glass 64,500,000 63 Upholstery leather 39,050,000 Board feet 11 830,390,000 Lumber, hardwood 250,000,000 Lumber. softwood Yards Cloth, upholstery 39,500,000 13,755,000 Top and side-curtain material Gallons Paint and varnish 15,500,000 80 Gasoline 6,566,450,000 Lubricating oil 350,000,000 26 .z These data are taken from “Facts and Figures of the Automobile Industry,” 1927 edition, published by the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce.
Of necessity, the table includes only a few of the many materials that go into the automobile, that are used as accessories to its manufacture, or that are consumed during its operation as a vehicle. Large amounts of acids, alkalies, fluxes, rosin, synthetic resins, bone, cyanide, celluloid, glue, graphite, grinding wheels, lime, pumice stone, cork, cotton, asbestos, felt, hair, jute, pulp products, oxygen, hydrogen, acetylene, and a multitude of other materials, including
October, 1927
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY.
even diamonds, are used by the manufacturer of motor cars, either as component parts of the car itself, or as adjuncts to its manufacture. Besides these materials, there are the large number of those consumed in the operation of the automobile. Think, for instance, of all the cement, the brick, the sand, the tar, the asphalt, and the hygroscopic salts, which go into the roads and bridges that have developed along with the automobile. Chemistry and its allied sciences have contributed in a large way to the production of most of these materials, and some of them are manufactured by the strictly chemical industries-they would not be available at all, were it not for chemical science. This symposium will show how large
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chemistry’s contribution to the materials used in automotive vehicles really has been. Purpose of Symposium
It is the purpose of this symposium to bring together in one place a survey, or a capitulation, of what chemistry and its allied sciences have already contributed to the materials employed in automotive transportation. But the symposium is not concerned alone with the contributions that chemistry has already made to automotive transportation. It is also interested in what may still be contributed by chemical science. The capacity of chemistry to contribute to automotive transportation has by no means been exhausted.
Metallurgy and Motors By John A. Mathews C R U C I B L E S T E E L C O M P A N Y O F .%XERICA,
REAT ideas often germinate in obscurity until the time comes for proving their truth-the hour and the man for each new discovery.” Thus wrote a great metallurgist twenty years ago. Did not our own Langley contribute to Lindbergh’s flight to Paris? Perhaps the author of “Darius Green” should be included in the same category, for it takes dreamers as well as scientists to set in motion thoughts and calculations and experiments which, in their own good time, crystallize in achievement. Just as no man liveth unto himself, so no science or branch of science can stand alone. The progress in each science makes for progresr in other sciences. Metallurgy is one of the oldest of the arts and one of the newest of the sciences. I n fact, the standard definition of metallurgy has not yet been changed from “the art of extracting metals from their ores and fitting them for use.” The art is a t least as old as the Christian era, but the writer distinctly recalls. during his university days in the nineties, an aversion to the study of metallurgy because it seemed to be taught as a descriptive subject dealing with facts, equipment, and processes and with little of scientific appeal. I n the late nineties appeared the beginning of a particular interest in alloys, and the application of scientific methods to their study-thermal analysis, microscopy, etc. Pioneer Work in Heat Treatment
The British Institution of Mechanical Engineers had an Alloys Research Committee with Sir William Robertsdusten a t its head, and I proceeded to his laboratory, in the Royal School of Mines, in 1900. He and his associates had just completed the thermal analysis of the iron-carbon series and Rooseboom, from Roberts-Austen’s data, attempted to explain the iron-carbon diagram from the standpoint of the phase rule of Gibbs. Now it is quite likely that most automobile engineers and motor designers never heard of these men or the iron-carbon diagram and, if shown one, might inquire, what has that to do with an automobile? It is the rock on which is founded the scientific heat treatment of steel and which makes possible the quantity production and treatment of dependable parts. Its connection with production may not be so obvious, but that is because it refers to the prior heat treatment in the way of forging, annealing, or heat-treating and annealing, to put the material into its best condition for tooling operations. The results of such operations depend upon a knowledge of the critical temperatures and ranges foi each kind ‘of steel used.
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The art of heat treatment far antedates Gore’s discovery of recalescence or Osmond’s or Roberts-Austen’s determination of the definite critical points, and without this exact knowledge was carried on with very great skill by empirical methods in two principal lines of quantity production: first, in the hardening and tempering of tools, cutlery, etc.; and second, in the handling of much larger work for ordnance, such as guns, projectiles, and armor. While air-hardening tool steel was, so far as I am aware, the earliest commercial use of an alloy steel, yet what are ordinarily called engineering steels of the alloy types probably received their first recognition in ordnance work. It is but forty years since the first systematic study of alloy additions to iron-carbon steels was made by Hadfield in his epoch-making researches on manganese steel. A little later came nickel steels, and then a profusion of alloy steels of ternary, quaternary, and more complex types. While all these series were not systematically investigated, they have been commercially produced in limited varieties for about fifty years. Nickel steels when first produced were known as “Meteor Steels,” because it had long been known that meteors are usually iron-nickel alloys with or without some cobalt. The chromium-nickel steels were used in ordnance in the latter part of the last century, so we see that when the automotive industries began the materials for their construction were already available. But a very great deal had t o be learned about their manufacture, properties, and treatment for specific purposes before the makers of such devices could expect fairly smooth sailing in their manufacturing programs. Metallurgy a Branch of Applied Chemistry
You cannot divorce cause and effect nor supply and demand and so problems without number arose during the years of the present century and the needs of industry have been met with great success. The contribution of the ferrous metallurgist to this program has been great. Metallurgy is a branch of applied chemistry and from the pure science standpoint, a backward branch. As Engle has recently said: “The science of metals forms a happy complement to the study of the states of aggregation. How many of our textbooks of physical chemistry do well by the gases, ideal or otherwise, treat the liquids and solutions with much consideration and detail, but when they come to the solids are sparing of information or complex of explanation.” The physico-chemical studies of metallurgical processes are extremely difficult, particularly when high temperatures
