Design, Manufacturing and Properties of Refractory Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Refractory materials are strategic materials taking into account the fact that they enable the production of strategic building materials, such as steel, cement, or glass. Additionally, they ensure safe human work and eco-friendliness. Extensive research into their properties, including corrosion resistance, mechanical properties or thermal behavior, is critical in the development of new types of long-life and ecologic materials as well as in enhancing the properties of existing ones. At present, Artificial Intelligence (AI) contributes to facilitating R&D and industrial processes, including the refractory industry, e.g., in predicting selected material properties or wear of refractory lining. Thus, exploring this cutting-edge technology has great potential. AI can provide solutions to numerous problems which are too complicated to be resolved by a human due to sophisticated relations and big data. This issue invites a broad group of researchers who test and assess primary and secondary refractory raw materials, design or investigate properties of both formed and monolithic refractory materials with the intention to increase their lifetime or enhance positive or neutral environmental character, including those applying AI technology.

Dr. Ilona Jastrzębska
Prof. Dr. Jacek Szczerba
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.