Iron and Steel Heritage of India : Contributions from the National Metallurgical Laboratory

The National Metallurgical Laboratory (NAIL) has done pioneering work in esiablishing the heritage of India in iron and steel making. Archaeometallurgical studies cond-ucted by NML in its early days have been presented. Some other sore recent pursuits of NML in this direction, as in archaeomaterials science of glasses, has also been discussed. In furtherance of the iron and steel heritage of India, NML has contributed profusely to the development of modern Indian iron and steel industry. Notable amongst such contributions are its work on characterisation and beneficiation of raw materials for the iron and steel industry, production of spohge iron, improvements for foundry grade iron technologies, pilot scale studies on steel making, production of ferro—alloys etc. The work done at AWL 'in these areas are briefly presented