Types of Steel Materials and Their Uses

Steel is a versatile material that can be employed for a variety purposes. Steel is used in over 55% of cars. The alloy used in its production determines its flexibility, as they impact the material’s strength, durability and performance. For example, the way that manufacturers cool the metal can have a significant impact on the microstructure of the metal and its overall properties. It can be altered to attain specific characteristics like machinability yielding strength, and corrosion resistance.

Steel is iron that has other elements alloyed to it in order to improve its physical properties and make the steel suitable for particular uses. The proportions of these extra alloying elements determine what category of steel it belongs to, and therefore its overall performance in various applications.

For example, stainless steel contains at least 11% chromium, which makes it impervious to corrosion. This makes it suitable for a wide range of uses such as kitchen utensils or cutlery. Tool steel is a preferred material because of its hardness and resistance to abrasion. It’s also used for machine dies and hand tools. Furthermore, the high weldability and ductility of carbon steels makes them ideal for a broad array of applications. Electrical steel is a specialized steel what type of steel materials are used in the construction grade that is composed of silicon (typically at least 3%) This enhances the magnetic properties and decreases eddy-current losses. This makes it ideal for laminations and transformer cores of electric motors.