A couple of weeks ago I was doing research in the library of the Dept. of Arms and Armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and ran across an interesting publication that discussed damascus steels in connection with the topic of superplasticity in ultra high carbon steels. I found the publication online and thought I'd post it in case anyone might be interested. My Google search for that publication turned up a couple of more publications on similar topics. Information about all three follows.

Ultrahigh Carbon Steels, Damascus Steels, and Superplasticity by Oleg. D. Sherby and Jeffrey Wadsworth. UCRL-JC-127180 Preprint prepared for 9th International Metallurgical and Materials Congress, Istanbul, Turkey in June 1997. Published by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, April 1997. Online version at: http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/555400

Another interesting online article about metallographic analysis of a damascus knife blade is at: http://www.angelsword.com/DamaskReport03.pdf

An online article about wootz steel is at: http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/f_quest/f_wsteel/indiaw.htm