Stainless Steels
Introduction
Stainless steel is an alloy of iron, which had beginning in 1913 in Sheffield, England; Harry Brearley was trying a number of alloys, and noticed that samples cut from one of these trial heats did not rust and were in fact difficult to etch. When he investigated this curious material, it contained about 13% chromium. This led to the development of the stainless steels. Stainless steel contains at least 11% chromium and may contain elements such as carbon, other nonmetals and metals to obtain other desired properties. Almost all stainless steels (with the exception of some martensitic steels) have low carbon contents, generally below 0.15%. The main reason is that under certain conditions, carbon can preferentially combine with chromium to form chromium-rich carbon deposits at grain boundaries. This depletes the prevailing chromium levels in this region of the material and makes corrosion possible. Due to many excellent performance, stainless steel soon began to cause a sensation in the market since it came out.
Classification & Property & Application
Today, there are already over 250 stainless steel alloys on the market. They can be divided into five main categories: ferrite stainless steel (400 series), austenite stainless steel (300 series), martensite stainless steel (400 series), precipitation hardening (pH grades) stainless steel, and duplex stainless steel. Because duplex stainless steel has a two-phase microstructure that consists of grains of ferritic and austenitic stainless steel, it may be singled out for presentation. The stainless steels show diverse properties, including higher work hardening rate, higher ductility, higher strength and hardness, higher hot strength, higher corrosion resistance, higher cryogenic toughness, lower magnetic response (austenitic only), keeping corrosion resistant surface in the finished product. These properties make stainless steel is used in a multitude of fields including architecture, art, chemical engineering, food and beverage manufacture, vehicles, medicine, energy and firearms. And different grades of stainless steel have different properties and capabilities, and are therefore used in many cases for different purposes and fields. The enormous benefits of stainless steel make our daily lives easier and truly modernize industries such as transportation and medicine, which can be said to be a true technological marvel.
As a leading supplier of metals and alloys, Alfa Chemistry now can provide various stainless steels in the shapes of bar, wire, strip, foil, pipe, tube, sheet, plate, forgings, pipe fittings, flanges, etc. The main products include: