Steel is a plethora of material that can be used for a variety applications. In fact, it’s believed that more than 55% of the average car is composed of steel. The alloy used to manufacture it determines its versatility, since they affect the durability, strength and performance. The way in which the metal is cooled can have significant impact on its microstructure, and therefore, its overall properties. It is manipulated to attain specific properties such as machinability, yielding strength, and corrosion resistance.
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 other alloying elements determines the category of steel it belongs to and its overall performance for various applications.
For instance stainless steel has at least 11% chromium. This makes it impervious to corrosion. This characteristic is what makes it ideal for a variety of kitchen utensils and cutlery. Tool steel is popular because of its hardness and resistance to scratching. It’s also used for hand tools and machine dies. Carbon steels also lend themselves to a variety of applications because of their high ductility. Electrical steel is a steel grade that is composed of silicon (typically around 3%) This increases its magnetic properties, as well as reducing losses from eddy-current. It is therefore ideal for laminations and transformer cores of electric motors.