Use of Ecological Paradigm in Material Degradation Engineering

Abstract

The necessity to move from the conventional technical-technological paradigms to the ecological paradigm is perfectly justified. The degradation of materials is defined as a negative phenomenon, whose study should be extended as a new scientific branch, called material degradation engineering. The two types of life cycles of materials (products) are: the entropic cycle and the antientropic cycle (negentropic).
The three arguments conditioning the ecological paradigm to be analysed are:
- the law of unity of opposites;
- the impurification with inclusions is a technological dirtying process, included into the industrial ecology;
- the degradation adversely influences the capacity of durable material.
The paper work is structured in five chapters based mainly on chapters II, III and IV, as fallows: II. The need to use new knowledge paradigms in the material degradation engineering, III. Classification of the degradation processes, IV. Complex degradation in continuous casting plants (c.c.p.).