Engineering materials steel

The great advantage of steel as an engineering material is its versatiUty. Properties can be controlled and changed by heat treatment. Thus, if steel is to be formed into some intricate shape, it can be made very soft and ductile by heat treatment on the other hand, alternative heat treatments can also impart high strength. 

The SiC whisker-reinforced alumina composite, a model for engineered materials, has opened new vistas for tool material development. Whereas SiC whisker-reinforced alumina is used extensively for the machining of nickel-base superaHoys, SiC whiskers react chemically with steel, causing rapid wear on the rake face. Attempts are underway to replace SiC whiskers with less reactive whiskers such as TiC or TiN. 

About 20% of the total import bill of a country like Britain is spent on engineering materials. Table 2.2 shows how this spend is distributed. Iron and steel, and the raw materials used to make them, account for about a quarter of it. Next are wood and lumber - still widely used in light construction. More than a quarter is spent on the metals copper, silver, aluminium and nickel. All polymers taken together, including rubber, account for little more than 10%. If we include the further metals zinc, lead, tin, tungsten and mercury, the list accounts for 99% of all the money spent abroad on materials, and we can safely ignore the contribution of materials which do not appear on it. 

Fig. A1.41. Pearlite in a eutectoid-composition plain-carbon steel, x500. (After K. J. Pascoe, An Introduction to the Properties of Engineering Materials, Van Nostrand Reinhold, London, 1978.)...

Pao, P. S., Wei, W. and Wei, R. P., Effect of frequency on fatigue crack growth response of AISl 4340 steel in water vapour , Proc. of Environment Sensitive Fracture of Engineering Materials, 24-26 Oct. 1977, Chicago, USA, The Metallurgical Society of the AIME, pp. 565-580 (1977)... 

Bacterial corrosion is often referred to as microbiologically influenced corrosion. MIC involves the initiation or acceleration of corrosion by microorganisms. The metabolic products of microorganisms appear to affect most engineering materials, but the more commonly used corrosion-resistant alloys, such as stainless steels, seem to be particularly susceptible. 

Low carbon steel (mild steel) is the most commonly used engineering material. It is cheap is available in a wide range of standard forms and sizes and can be easily worked and welded. It has good tensile strength and ductility. 

Figure 5.26 Stress-strain diagram for mild steel, illustrating different types of stress. From Z. Jastrzebski, The Nature and Properties of Engineering Materials, 2nd ed. Copyright 1976 by John Wiley Sons, Inc. This material is used by permission of John Wiley Sons, Inc.

American National Standards Institute American Society for Testing and Materials Steel Structures Painting Council National Association of Corrosion Engineers... 

Wei, R. P., A Perspective on Environmentally Assisted Crack Growth in Steels, Proceedings of International Conference on Environmental Degradation of Engineering Materials, Gdansk-Jurata, Poland, September 19-23 (1999). 

L Zhang, M Wen, M Imade, S Fukuyama, and K Yokogawa, Effect of nickel equivalent on hydrogen environment embrittlement of austenitic stainless steels at low temperatures , in Eracture of Nano and Engineering Materials and Structures, Alexandroupolis, Greece, 2006. 

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