Nickel Magazine - Current Issue

Volume 28-1: Enduring - A lifetime roof for a Singapore sports club

March 01, 2013

Features

Driving nickel

Nickel is used in thousands of different applications, but often you don’t see it and probably don’t even know it’s there. There is, for example, some nickel in every one of the 80 million motor vehicles that were assembled in 2011, which included 60 million automobiles and 20 million trucks of all types.

Electroplating parks in China

With the rapid development of manufacturing in China, the demand for electroplating in that country continues to rise. There are now about 15,000 electroplating enterprises in China that have annual sales revenues exceeding 20 million renminbi (RMB), over US$3 million, per year. Indeed, the electroplating industry has become a pillar of China’s overall economy while rapidly changing to meet today’s strict environmental requirements.

First Class Cover

Situated on Singapore’s idyllic East Coast, the Chinese Swimming Club has a 90-year history of excellence in sports – not just swimming but water polo, basketball, tennis, squash and badminton as well. Now the club has something else to boast about: a dazzling roof consisting entirely of electrochemically coloured tiles made from nickel-containing stainless steel.

In Focus

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Small and Vital

Often it’s the small things, or the hidden things, that nickel in its various forms and utilizing its various properties allows us to do, and do reliably, consistently, efficiently and safely.

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In Use

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"Rising"

The sculpture "Rising" by Chinese artist Zhang Huan, was designed as “a philosophical reflection of the world around us,” according to the description on Zhang’s web site. Consisting entirely of mirror-polished stainless steel (Type 316, UNS S31600), the work depicts innumerable doves in flight, the symbol of world peace, and a twisted tree branch that resembles the body of a dragon. “

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Re-inventing the wheel

Improving overall engine performance in relation to fuel economy is crucial to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conserving fossil fuel stocks. One recent innovation is the small aluminum alloy “compressor wheel” which is installed in the exhaust gas recirculation system of engines to increase operating efficiency.


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Nickel for memory

A digital storage and retrieval device is as vital to a computer as a heart is to a human being and nickel makes two essential contributions.

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Nickel alloys for spark plugs

Designers of internal combustion engines big and small – from the compact four-cylinder motor under the car’s hood to room-sized power plants – require reliable spark plugs to keep their creations running smoothly. And spark plug manufacturers in turn rely on nickel alloys to build reliable, durable electrodes to keep their plugs firing dependably.


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The History of Stainless Steel—Part 3

By the end of the first decade of the 1900s, the properties of chromium and chromium-nickel steels were beginning to be better understood and this, in turn, led to the independent development of stainless steels by metallurgists working in several countries.

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Enabling Innovation

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SABRE Engine

If the full potential of space technology is to be realized, the cost of getting into orbit will have to be reduced, and the key to doing so could be a hybrid rocket engine that could power an aircraft beyond the stratosphere. At its heart is a nickel alloy.

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Curiosity on Mars

Not long after NASA’s Curiosity rover began exploring the surface of Mars in August 2012, its Earth-bound controllers used laser and X-ray probes to analyze an odd-coloured rock nicknamed “Jake.” Among the array of elements they discovered was one that was helping to power those very instruments: nickel.



 

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