Steel is a versatile material that can be employed for a variety uses. Steel is a component in over 55% of vehicles. The kind of alloys that are used to create it determines its versatility, as they impact the material’s quality, durability, and strength. The manner in which metal is cooled has significant impact on its microstructure, and consequently its overall properties. It can be altered to achieve certain properties such as machinability, yielding strength, and resistance to corrosion.
In its most basic form it is iron that has been alloyed with various elements to improve its physical properties and make it suitable for particular uses. The proportions of the other alloying elements determines what category of steel a steel is part of and its overall due diligence processes performance in various applications.
For example, stainless is made up of a minimum 11% of chromium. This makes it invulnerable against corrosion. This characteristic is what makes it ideal for a broad range of kitchen utensils and cutlery. Tool steel is a popular choice because of its hardness and resistance to abrasion. It’s also used for machine dies and hand tools. Additionally, the superior ductility and weldability of carbon steels make them suitable for a variety of applications. Electrical steel is on the other hand is a very specialized grade of steel that is composed of silicon (typically about 3%). This improves its magnetic properties and reduces eddy current losses making it ideal for transformer cores and electric motor laminations.