Steel is a very useful material that is utilized in a multitude of applications. Steel is used in over 55% of all cars. The type of alloys that are used to create it determines its versatility, as they affect the material’s durability, strength and performance. The manner in which metal is cooled has a major impact on its microstructure, and consequently, its overall properties. It can also be altered to achieve specific characteristics like machinability, yield 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 specific applications. The proportions of these other alloying elements determine which category of steel it belongs to, and therefore its overall performance in different applications.

For example, stainless is made up of a minimum 11% chromium. This makes it resistant against corrosion. This makes it suitable for a wide range of uses like cutting-edge kitchen equipment or cutlery. Tool steel is popular because of its high hardness and resistance to scratching. It is also used to hand tools and machine dies. Carbon steels also lend themselves to a variety of applications due to their high ductility. Electrical steel, on the other mergerdataroom.blog/virtual-commissioning-in-business hand is a highly specialized type of steel that contains silicon (typically about 3%). This enhances the magnetic properties and decreases eddy current losses making it great for transformer cores and electric motor laminations.