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Stainless steel is an iron-carbon alloy with a minimum of 10.5% chromium content. There are different types of stainless steel, containing different proportions of iron, carbon, molybdenum, nickel. It has similar structural properties to steel, although its strength varies significantly.
Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon with improved strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Because of its high tensile strength and low cost, steel is one of the most commonly manufactured materials in the world.
Steel is made from iron and carbon. Cast iron is a hard, brittle material that is difficult to work, whereas steel is malleable, relatively easily formed and versatile. On its own, iron is not strong, but a low concentration of carbon – less than 1 percent, depending on the kind of steel – gives steel strength and other important properties.
Iron alloys are most broadly divided by their carbon content: cast iron has 2–4% carbon impurities; wrought iron oxidizes away most of its carbon, to less than 0.1%. The much more valuable steel has a delicately intermediate carbon fraction, and its material properties range according to the carbon percentage: high carbon steel is stronger but more brittle than low carbon steel.
Ductile iron is not a single material but part of a group of materials which can be produced with a wide range of properties through control of their microstructure. The common defining characteristic of this group of materials is the shape of the graphite. In ductile irons, graphite is in the form of nodules rather than flakes as in grey iron.
A material property is an intensive property of a material, i.e., a physical property or chemical property that does not depend on the amount of the material. These quantitative properties may be used as a metric by which the benefits of one material versus another can be compared, thereby aiding in materials selection.
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The characteristic properties of elemental metals and nonmetals are quite distinct, as shown in the table below. Metalloids, straddling the metal-nonmetal border , are mostly distinct from either, but in a few properties resemble one or the other, as shown in the shading of the metalloid column below and summarized in the small table at the top ...