High Alloy Steels

HIGH ALLOY STEELS

1. What are High Alloy Steels?

✔ High alloy steels are steels which contain more than 5% of one or more alloying elements.

✔They have different microstructure and require different heat treatments than that of the plain carbon steels.

✔ Their room temperature structures after normalising may be austenitic, martensitic or contain precipitated carbides.

2. Types of High-Alloy Steels

Though there are several groups of high-alloy steels, the two important high-alloy steels are:

1. Tool and die steels, and

2. Stainless steels.

1. Tool and die steels: Tool steels are high-quality alloys used for tools, dies, etc., which require special characteristics of hardenability, wear resistance, resistance to softening on heating, and the like.

2. Stainless steels: Stainless steels are used for improving corrosion resistance. These steels will be discussed in Section 3.12.

† Nb = Niobium

3. Summary of Plain Carbon and Alloy Steels

Table 3.4 presents the mechanical characteristics and typical applications of several plain carbon steels and alloy steels, which have been quenched and tempered.

Table 3.4. Typical applications and mechanical property ranges for to yigara asili: plain carbon and alloy steels

† Classified as high-carbon steels