Steel is an incredibly useful material that is utilized in a myriad of applications. Steel is used in over 55% of all cars. Its flexibility is determined by the type of alloy elements used to make it because these elements affect the strength of the material as well as durability and performance. The manner in which metal is cooled has significant effects on its microstructure and consequently its overall properties. It can be manipulated to attain specific properties like machinability, yielding strength, and resistance to corrosion.
Steel is iron that has had other elements added to it in order to improve its physical properties and make the steel suitable for specific uses. The proportions of the additional alloying elements determines which class of steel it belongs to and the overall performance in various applications.
For instance, stainless is made up of at least 11% of chromium. This makes it impervious against corrosion. This makes it ideal for a wide range of uses such as cutting boards and kitchen utensils. Tool steel is a preferred material due to its high hardness and resistance to scratching. It’s also used for machine dies and hand tools. Additionally, the superior ductility and weldability of carbon steels makes them ideal for a variety of applications. Electrical steel is on the other hand, is an example of an extremely specialized grade of steel which contains silicon (typically about 3%). This improves its magnetic properties, as well as reducing eddy-current losses. This makes it ideal for transformer cores and laminations of electric motors.