Types of Steel Materials and Their Uses
Steel is a very useful material that is utilized in a variety of applications. Steel is used in over 55% of vehicles. The type of alloys used to make it determines its flexibility, as they impact the material’s quality, durability, and strength. For example, the way the process of cooling the metal can have a significant effect on its microstructure and its overall properties. It is manipulated to obtain specific properties like machinability, yielding strength, and corrosion resistance.
In its simplest form it is iron that has been alloyed with various elements to improve its physical properties and make it suitable for certain uses. The proportions of these extra alloying elements determine which steel category it belongs to, and therefore its overall performance in different applications.
For example stainless is composed of at least 11 percent chromium. This makes it impervious against corrosion. This makes it perfect for a range of applications, such as kitchen utensils or cutlery. Tool steel is a preferred material because of its high hardness and resistance to scratching. It’s also used for machine dies and hand tools. Additionally, the superior weldability and ductility of carbon steels make them suitable get more for a wide range of applications. Electrical steel is, however is a highly specialized type of steel which contains silicon (typically 3percent). This improves its magnetic properties, and also reduces losses from eddy-current. It is therefore ideal for transformer cores and laminations of electric motors.
