Engineering Alloys (Ferrous And Non-Ferrous)

Introduction

Away of solid materials employed in engineering practice plastic, ceramics and metals are very familiar. Then metals may be employed in their elemental forms like titanium, copper and aluminum. While a metallic element has additives much minor in quantity than base element, the resultant material is termed as an alloy of base element. Out of all metallic elements it is iron that alloys are employed in largest quantity. All alloys whether iron forms the base are grouped like ferrous material. Another alloy is grouped like non-ferrous materials.

Ferrous materials, both alloys and metal have iron as their base and because of wide range of their properties are most helpful for employ in engineering structures and machines. Owing to the advents in steel casting and technology technique ferrous metals are cast, shaped and machined in different shapes and sizes. Various standard shapes of sections are variable commercially that make the job of constructor and designer much easy. They are employed for making trusses, boilers, ships and bridges. For that construction standard section and sheets of steel of plats are available. Another machine parts like shafts, bearings, bodies, pulleys and gears of machines could be made in steel via forming, casting or cutting processes or combination thereof. Metal cutting tools, punches, dies, jigs and fixtures are made in ferrous metal also. One of the largest steel consumers is automobile industry. Despite the modern trend of making light cars almost 60 percent of weight of car is still because of steel and an average passenger car have about 500 kgf of steel in India. Possibly in countries like USA, here cars of bigger size are in employ this weight could be as high like 800 kgf/car.

The first human effort just before making tools was based on meteoritic iron acquired from meteorite such had struck the earth. These ensue more than 3000 BC. In India in Delhi the well identified Ashoka Column was constructed more than 4000 years ago. The blast furnace was invented in 1340 AD and then it seems possible to generate large quantities of steel and iron. The future trend is to replace steel via plastics in numerous equipment and machines. This target has been attains in a number of home appliances. The desire for steel is level since 1965 year. Cost fluctuations in more metals have been prohibited. The similar is true for steel that cost is increasing at constant rate as early eighties. The comparative value of various metals along with piece of gold at 1000 is specified in Table no.1.

       Table no.1: Approximate Comparative Prices of several Metals along with Gold Piece of 100 as Base per Weight