The Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering (MME) is one of the founding departments of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. The department was established as the metallurgical engineering department in 1952. It was re-structured as the Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering in 1997 to highlight its versatile and robust contribution to metallic and non-metallic materials. MME is an interdisciplinary field that investigates all classes of materials with prominence on relationships between structure and processing and properties and performances of materials. Since its establishment, the department has been in a relentless pursuit to provide the country with the highest possible standards in materials studies.
The department works with resourceful state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and expert faculty members to support its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. With up-to-date programme design and dynamic industrial orientation, MME has been successfully serving the needs of the manufacturing industries of steel, ceramic and plastic sectors in Bangladesh in terms of both high-quality graduates and research. Consequently, MME remains the hub of materials engineering in Bangladesh. The department of MME has the facilities and technical know-how to serve the country better in several sector areas including, but not limited to, construction, automobile and transportation, light metal, power, energy and mineral resources in the following areas:
• Production and quality enhancement of steels including high strength, low alloy steels and steel products in Bangladesh. Over the years, the Department of MME has played a significant part in the forward linkage (rolling, forging, and so on) and backward linkage (production of spares and machine components and so on) industries of the ever-expanding steel sectors of Bangladesh. The department can also perform the quality assessment of structural steel and the fabrication process of steel structures, which are used nowadays to erect industry/housing in the country.
• Comprehensive physical, mechanical, chemical, thermal, and metallurgical characterisation of metallic and non-metallic materials using modern machines and equipment per the relevant standards.
• Quality assessment and destructive/ non-destructive inspection of welded structures. The department can play a significant role in the quality assessment of gas pipelines used by the country's gas transmission and distribution sector.
• Production and characterization of polymer and polymer-based composites used for railway carriage and household products.
• Development, production and assessment of machine parts (e.g., automobile parts, jute mills parts and so on) and mould materials for plastic industries.
• Development and assessment of advanced ceramics (alumina-based cutting tools, biomaterials, dental materials and ceramic insulators) and other non-metallic minerals (silica sand, ferroalloys, cement, clinkers, clay and so on).
• Heat treatment (e.g., hardening, annealing and so on) and surface treatment (e.g., carburizing, nitriding, electro/electroless plating and so on) of different machine parts and spares.
• Corrosion study of materials.
• Detection of the extent of damage accumulated in a component /machine and employment of life prediction and development of life extension technologies. A thorough collaborative scheme between the power and petrochemical industries and the Department can allow the lifetime prediction of the power plant and fertilizer factories on a routine basis and hence can avoid /minimise unscheduled shutdowns.
• Failure analysis of a component /machine during use due to fatigue, creep, corrosion, friction, residual stresses, etc.
• Organisation of seminar/workshop/training programme on specialised materials-related topics, such as moulding and casting, materials section, heat treatment of metals, corrosion and surface engineering, steel production and quality control, etc.