Customizing carbon steel to meet customer specifications

A metallurgist at a steel mill received a request for a custom carbon steel with a yield tensile strength of at least 415 MPa and an ultimate tensile strength of at least 690 MPa.  Knowing that strength increases, but machinability and weldability decrease when increasing carbon content, he wants to optimize carbon content while keeping the strength at the required level.

Calculating the relationship between carbon content and material strengths

He searches ‘carbon tensile strength steels’ on Knovel to learn more about the relationship between carbon content and material strengths.

The first hit,The Handbook of Materials Selection has a productivity tool icon next to it, so he starts with that handbook.  In the interactive graphs section, he finds a figure that shows the effect of carbon content on tensile properties of steel. Click on the image to see more detail.

Since the strength values on the graph are given in ksi  and the values in specification are in MPa, he uses Knovel’s unit converter to find specified values of strength in ksi:

Now he can mouse over the interactive graph to find the tensile properties of the steel at various carbon levels.

Data found in Knovel indicates that steel with 0.45% carbon would meet customer specifications

In less than five minutes, the metallurgist was able to zero in on the composition of the steel desired by the customer and is now ready for next steps- testing experimental specimens of the 0.45% carbon steel to verify his findings. Knovel proves to be an effective and productive tool for finding reliable data fast and helping to visualize results.