Steel is a very useful material that is utilized in a variety of applications. Steel is a component in over 55% of vehicles. The alloy that are used to create it determines its versatility, since they impact the material’s durability, strength and performance. For example, the way that the metal is cooled by manufacturers can have a significant effect on its microstructure and its overall properties. It can be altered to obtain specific properties, such as machinability yielding strength, and resistance to corrosion.
Steel is iron that has other elements added to it in order to enhance its physical properties and make the steel suitable for particular uses. The proportions of these extra alloying elements determine which category of steel it belongs to, and thereby its overall performance across different applications.
For instance stainless steel is composed of at least 11% chromium, which makes it impervious to corrosion. This makes it ideal for a variety of purposes like cutting boards and kitchen utensils. Tool steel is a favorite due to its high hardness and resistance to abrasion. It’s also used for machine dies and hand tools. Carbon steels are also suited to a variety of applications because of their high ductility. Electrical steel, on the other hand is a very specialized grade of steel which contains silicon (typically around 3%). This enhances the magnetic properties, as well as reducing the loss of eddy-current. This makes it ideal for laminations and transformer cores of electric motors.