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Complex-phase (CP) steels are employed in applications that require high-strength and good edge formability. These steels derive their strength from a fine-grained bainite-ferrite microstructure, and alloying to provide solid-solution and precipitation strengthening. CP steels are produced industrially through a process of controlled rolling and cooling to produce desirable microstructures. Hole-expansion tests are typically used as a measure of edge formability for applications such as stretch-flanges. It has been shown that CP microstructures are susceptible to large fluctuations in hole-expansion performance with little change in processing or resulting tensile properties. The steel’s characteristics of damage evolution are critical to the hole-expansion performance. This study investigates the role of microstructure in the development of damage in CP microstructural variants. Two variant pairs of different thicknesses were produced from the leading and trailing edge of industrially produced hot-rolled sheet. Each pair consisted of a variant with poor hole-expansion performance, and a variant with good hole-expansion performance. Each variant was tested via interrupted double-notched uniaxial tension testing to induce damage. Damage evolution in each variant was quantified by X-ray micro-computed tomography (XµCT), and supplementary optical micrography. The damage results were correlated with microstructural characteristics. It was shown that poor hole-expansion variants failed by intergranular fracture. In these variants, void damage induced by hard martensite and retained austenite was not critical in producing failure. Purely void-damaged microstructures failed by ductile fracture, whereas cracked microstructures failed in a mixed brittle-ductile failure initiated by planar cracks. Microstructural banding of large elongated ferrite grains correlated with the existence of intergranular planar fractures. / Thesis (Master, Mechanical and Materials Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2013-12-17 15:03:02.206

The study of DNA variation is one of the most promising avenues for learning about the evolutionary and historical past of humans and other species. However, the difficulty associated with obtaining DNA directly from ancient remains have for long kept genomic studies of population history trapped in time; confined to interpreting patterns of modern-day variation without direct historical observations. In this thesis, I outline new approaches for the retrieval, analysis and interpretation of large-scale genomic data from ancient populations, including solutions to overcome problems associated with limited genome coverage, modern-day contamination, temporal differences between samples, and post-mortem DNA damage. I integrate large-scale genomic data sets from ancient remains with modern-day variation to trace the human past; from traits targeted by natural selection in the early ancestors of anatomically modern humans, to their descendants' interbreeding with archaic populations in Eurasia and the spread of agriculture in Europe and Africa. By first reconstructing the earliest population diversification events of early modern humans using a novel large-scale genomic data set from Khoe-San populations in southern Africa, I devise a new approach to search for genomic patterns of selective sweeps in ancestral populations and report evidence for skeletal development as a major target of selection during the emergence of early modern humans. Comparing publicly available genomes from archaic humans, I further find that the distribution of archaic human ancestry in Eurasia is more complex than previously thought. In the first direct genomic study of population structure in prehistoric populations, I demonstrate that individuals associated with farming- and hunter-gatherer complexes in Neolithic Scandinavia were strongly genetically differentiated, and direct comparisons with modern-day populations as well as other prehistoric individuals from Southern Europe suggest that this structure originated from Northward expansion of Neolithic farming populations. Finally, I develop a bioinformatic approach for removing modern-day contamination from large-scale ancient DNA sequencing data, and use this method to reconstruct the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of a Siberian Neandertal that is affected by substantial modern-day contamination.