INTRODUCTION

Alloy An alloy is a combination, either in solution or compound, of two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal, and where the resulting material has metallic properties. The resulting metallic substance has different properties (sometimes significantly different) from those of its components.

Properties
Alloys are usually prepared to improve on the desirable properties of their components. Steel, for instance, is stronger than iron, its primary component. The physical properties of an alloy, such as density, reactivity and electrical and thermal conductivity may not differ substantially from the alloy's elements. But engineering properties, such as tensile strength, shear strength and Young's modulus, can be vastly different from those of the constituent materials. Among other factors, this is due to the differing sizes of the atoms in the alloy larger atoms exert a compressive force on neighbouring atoms, and smaller atoms will exert a tensile force on their neighbours. Unlike a pure metal, where the atoms are more free to move, this helps the alloy resist deformation. Unlike pure metals, most alloys do not have a single melting point. Instead, they have a melting range in which the material is a mixture of solid and liquid phases. The temperature at which melting begins is called the solidus, and that at which melting is complete is called the liquidus. However, for most pairs of elements, there is a particular ratio which has a single melting point; this is called the eutectic mixture.

Classification
Alloys can be classified by the number of their constituents. An alloy with two components is called a binary alloy; one with three is a ternary alloy, and so forth. Alloys can be further classified as either substitutional alloys or interstitial alloys, depending on their method of formation. In subsititutional alloys, the atoms of the components are approximately the same size and the various atoms are simply substituted for one another in the crystal structure. An example of a (binary) substitutional alloy is brass, made up of copper and zinc.

Interstitial alloys occur when the atoms of one component are substantially smaller than the other and the smaller atoms fit into the spaces (interstices) between the larger atoms.

Terminology
In practice, some alloys are used so predominantly with respect to their base metals that the name of the primary constituent is also used as the name of the alloy. For example, 14 karat (58%) gold is an alloy of gold with other elements. Similarly, the silver used in jewelry and the aluminium used as a structural building material are also alloys. The term "alloy" is sometimes used in everyday speech as a synonym for a particular alloy. For example, automobile wheels made of "aluminium alloy" are commonly referred to as simply "alloy wheels". The usage is obviously indefinite, since steels and most other metals in practical use are also alloys

LIST OF ALLOYS
Alloys of magnesium

Magnox (aluminium) T-Mg-Al-Zn (Bergman phase) is a complex metallic alloy

Alloys of aluminium
Al-Li (lithium) Duralumin (copper) Nambe (aluminium plus seven other undisclosed metals) Silumin (silicon) AA-8000: used for building wire in the U.S. per the National Electrical Code

 Magnalium (5% magnesium) Aluminium also forms complex metallic alloys, like -Al-Mg, '-AlPd-Mn, T-Al3Mn

Alloys of potassium

NaK (sodium)

Alloys of iron
Steel (carbon) (category:steels) Stainless steel (chromium, nickel) AL-6XN Alloy 20 Celestrium Marine grade stainless Martensitic stainless steel Surgical stainless steel (chromium, molybdenum, nickel) Silicon steel (silicon) Tool steel (tungsten or manganese) Bulat steel Chromoly (chromium, molybdenum) Crucible steel Damascus steel HSLA steel High speed steel Maraging steel Reynolds 531 Wootz steel Iron Anthracite iron (carbon)

Cast iron (carbon) Pig iron (carbon) Wrought iron (carbon) Fernico (nickel, cobalt) Elinvar (nickel, chromium) Invar (nickel) Kovar (cobalt) Spiegeleisen (manganese, carbon, silicon) Ferroalloys (category:Ferroalloys) Ferroboron Ferrochrome Ferromagnesium Ferromanganese Ferromolybdenum Ferronickel Ferrophosphorus Ferrotitanium Ferrovanadium Ferrosilicon

Alloys of cobalt

Megallium Stellite (chromium, tungsten, carbon) Talonite Alnico Vitallium

Alloys of nickel

German silver (copper, zinc) Chromel (chromium) Hastelloy (molybdenum, chromium, sometimes tungsten) Inconel (chromium, iron)

Mu-metal (iron) Monel metal (copper, nickel, iron, manganese) Nichrome (chromium, iron, nickel) Nicrosil (chromium, silicon, magnesium) Nisil (silicon) Nitinol (titanium, shape memory alloy) Copper-Nickel (bronze, copper)

Alloys of copper

Beryllium copper (beryllium) Billon (silver) Brass (zinc) Calamine brass (zinc) Chinese silver (zinc) Gilding metal (zinc) Muntz metal (zinc) Pinchbeck (zinc) Prince's metal (zinc) Tombac (zinc) Bronze (tin, aluminium or any other element) Aluminium bronze (aluminium) Bell metal (tin) Guann Gunmetal (tin, zinc) Phosphor bronze (tin and phosphorus) Ormolu (Gilt Bronze) (zinc) Speculum metal (tin) Constantan (nickel) Corinthian brass (gold, silver) Cunife (nickel, iron) Cupronickel (nickel) Cymbal alloys (Bell metal) (tin)

Devarda's alloy (aluminium, zinc) Hepatizon (gold, silver) Heusler alloy (manganese, tin) Manganin (manganese, nickel) Molybdochalkos (lead) Nickel silver (nickel) Nordic gold (aluminium, zinc, tin) Shakudo (gold) Tumbaga (gold)

Alloys of zinc

Zamak (aluminium, magnesium, copper)

Alloys of gallium

Galinstan

Alloys of zirconium

Zircaloy

Alloys of silver

Sterling silver (copper) Britannia silver (copper)

Alloys of

tin

Britannium (copper, antimony)[1] Pewter (lead, copper) Solder (lead, antimony)

Rare earth alloys

Mischmetal (various rare earths)

Alloys of

gold

Corinthian brass (copper) Electrum (silver, copper) Tumbaga (copper) Rose gold (copper) White gold

Alloys of

mercury

Amalgam

Alloys of

lead

Molybdochalkos (copper) Solder (tin) Terne (tin) Type metal (tin, antimony)

Alloys of

bismuth

Wood's metal (lead, tin, cadmium) Rose metal (lead, tin) Field's metal (indium, tin)

Duralumin
Duralumin (also called duraluminum, duraluminium or dural) is the name of one of the earliest types of age-hardenable aluminium alloys. The main alloying constituents are copper, manganese and magnesium. A commonly used modern equivalent of this alloy type is AA2024, which contains (in wt.%) 4.4% copper, 1.5% magnesium and 0.6% manganese.

Typical yield strength is 450 MPa, with variations depending on the composition and temper[1]. Duralumin was developed by the German metallurgist Alfred Wilm at Drener Metallwerke Aktien Gesellschaft. In 1903, Wilm discovered that after quenching, an aluminium alloy containing 4% Cu would slowly harden when left at room temperature for several days. Further improvements led to the introduction of Duralumin in 1909[2]. The name is today obsolete, and mainly used in popular science to describe the Al-Cu alloy system, or 2000 series as designated by the Aluminum Association. Its first use was rigid airship frames. Its composition and heattreatment were a wartime secret. With this new rip-resistant mixture, duralumin quickly spread throughout the aircraft industry in the early 1930s, where it was well suited to the new monocoque construction techniques that were being introduced at the same time. Duralumin also is popular for use in precision tools such as levels because of its light weight and strength. Although the addition of copper improves strength, it also makes these alloys susceptible to corrosion. For sheet products, corrosion resistance can be greatly enhanced by metallurgical bonding of a highpurity aluminium surface layer. These sheets are referred to as Alclad, and are commonly used by the aircraft industry[3]. APPLICATINS: 2011: Wire, rod, and bar for screw machine products. Applications where good machinability and good strength are required. 2014: Heavy-duty forgings, plate, and extrusions for aircraft fittings, wheels, and major structural components, space booster tankage and structure, truck frame and suspension components. Applications requiring high strength and hardness including service at elevated temperatures.

2024: Aircraft structures, rivets, hardware, truck wheels, screw machine products, and other miscellaneous structural applications. The first age-hardened alloy ever discovered. 2036: Sheet for auto body panels. 2048: Sheet and plate in structural components for aerospace application and military equipment. 2141: Plate in thicknesses of 40 to 150 mm (1.5 to 6.0 in.) for aircraft structures. 2218: Forgings; aircraft and diesel engine pistons; aircraft engine cylinder heads; jet engine impellers and compressor rings. 2219: Welded space booster oxidizer and fuel tanks, supersonic aircraft skin and structure components. Readily weldable and useful for applications over temperature range of -270 to 300 C (-450 to 600 F). Has high fracture toughness, and the T8 temper is highly resistant to stress-corrosion cracking. 2618: Die and hand forgings. Pistons and rotating aircraft engine parts for operation at elevated temperatures. Tire molds.

Pig iron
Pig iron is raw iron, the immediate product of smelting iron ore with coke and limestone in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a very high carbon content, typically 3.5%, which makes it very brittle and not useful directly as a material except for limited applications. Pig iron is typically poured directly out of the bottom of the blast furnace through a trough into a ladle car for transfer to the steel plant in liquid form, referred to as "hot metal." The hot metal is then charged into a steel-making vessel to produce steel, typically with an electric arc furnace or basic oxygen furnace, by burning off the excess carbon in a controlled fashion, and adjusting the alloy composition. Earlier processes for this included the Bessemer Process, open hearth furnace, finery forge and the puddling furnace.

The traditional shape of the molds used for these ingots was a branching structure, formed in sand, with many individual ingots at right angles to a central channel or runner, bearing some similarity in appearance to a litter of piglets suckling on a sow. When the metal had cooled and hardened, the smaller ingots (the pigs) were simply broken from the much thinner runner (the sow), hence the name pig iron. As pig iron is intended for remelting, the uneven size of the ingots and inclusion of a little sand was unimportant compared to the ease of casting and of handling. Modern steel mills and direct reduction iron plants transfer the molten iron to a ladle for immediate use in the steel making furnaces, or cast it into pigs on a pig casting machine for reuse or resale. Modern pig casting machines produce stick pigs, which break into smaller 4-10 kg pieces at discharge. Cast iron is made by remelting pig iron, often along with substantial quantities of scrap iron, and taking various steps to remove undesirable contaminants, add alloys, and adjust the carbon content. The Chinese were making pig iron by the later Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC 256 BC). In Europe, the process did not become common until the 14th century.

Steel
Steel is a metal alloy whose major component is iron, with carbon content between 0.02% and 1.7% by weight. Carbon is the most cost effective alloying material for iron, but many other alloying elements are also used.[1] Carbon and other elements act as a hardening agent, preventing dislocations in the iron atom crystal lattice from sliding past one another. Varying the amount of alloying elements and their distribution in the steel controls qualities such as the hardness, elasticity, ductility, and tensile strength of the resulting steel. Steel with increased carbon content can be made harder and stronger than iron, but is also more brittle. The maximum solubility of carbon in iron

is 1.7% by weight, occurring at 1130 Celsius; higher concentrations of carbon or lower temperatures will produce cementite which will reduce the material's strength. Alloys with higher carbon content than this are known as cast iron because of their lower melting point.[1] Steel is also to be distinguished from wrought iron with little or no carbon, usually less than 0.035%. It is common today to talk about 'the iron and steel industry' as if it were a single thing; it is today, but historically they were separate products. Currently there are several classes of steels in which carbon is replaced with other alloying materials, and carbon, if present, is undesired. A more recent definition is that steels are iron-based alloys that can be plastically formed (pounded, rolled, etc.). Iron, like most metals, is not found in the Earth's crust in an elemental state. Iron can be found in the crust only in combination with oxygen or sulfur. Typically Fe2O3the form of iron oxide (rust) found as the mineral hematite, and FeS2Pyrite (fool's gold). Iron oxide is a soft sandstone-like material with limited uses on its own. Iron is extracted from ore by removing the oxygen by combining it with a preferred chemical partner such as carbon. This process, known as smelting, was first applied to metals with lower melting points. Copper melts at just over 1000 C, while tin melts around 250 C. Steel melts at around 1370 C. Both temperatures could be reached with ancient methods that have been used for at least 6000 years (since the Bronze Age). Since the oxidation rate itself increases rapidly beyond 800 C, it is important that smelting take place in a low-oxygen environment. Unlike copper and tin, liquid iron dissolves carbon quite readily, so that smelting results in an alloy containing too much carbon to be called steel. Even in the narrow range of concentrations that make up steel, mixtures of carbon and iron can form into a number of different structures, or allotropes, with very different properties; understanding these is essential to making quality steel. At room

temperature, the most stable form of iron is the body-centered cubic (BCC) structure ferrite or -iron, a fairly soft metallic material that can dissolve only a small concentration of carbon (no more than 0.021 wt% at 910 C). Above 910 C ferrite undergoes a phase transition from body-centered cubic to a face-centered cubic (FCC) structure, called austenite or -iron, which is similarly soft and metallic but can dissolve considerably more carbon (as much as 2.03 wt% carbon at 1154 C).[2] As carbon-rich austenite cools, the mixture attempts to revert to the ferrite phase, resulting in an excess of carbon. One way for carbon to leave the austenite is for cementite to precipitate out of the mix, leaving behind iron that is pure enough to take the form of ferrite, and resulting in a cementite-ferrite mixture. Cementite is a stoichiometric phase with the chemical formula of Fe3C. Cementite forms in regions of higher carbon content while other areas revert to ferrite around it. Self-reinforcing patterns often emerge during this process, leading to a patterned layering known as pearlite due to its pearl-like appearance, or the similar but less beautiful bainite. Perhaps the most important allotrope is martensite, a chemically metastable substance with about four to five times the strength of ferrite. A minimum of 0.4 wt% of carbon is needed in order to form martensite. When the austenite is quenched to form martensite, the carbon is "frozen" in place when the cell structure changes from FCC to BCC. The carbon atoms are much too large to fit in the interstitial vaccancies and thus distort the cell structure into a Body Centered Tetragonal (BCT) structure. Martensite and austenite have an identical chemical composition. As such, it requires extremely little thermal activation energy to form. The heat treatment process for most steels involves heating the alloy until austenite forms, then quenching the hot metal in water or oil, cooling it so rapidly that the transformation to ferrite or pearlite does not have time to take place. The transformation into martensite, by contrast, occurs almost immediately, due to a lower activation energy.

Martensite has a lower density than austenite, so that the transformation between them results in a change of volume. In this case, expansion occurs. Internal stresses from this expansion generally take the form of compression on the crystals of martensite and tension on the remaining ferrite, with a fair amount of shear on both constituents. If quenching is done improperly, these internal stresses can cause a part to shatter as it cools; at the very least, they cause internal work hardening and other microscopic imperfections. It is common for quench cracks to form when water quenched, although they may not always be visible. At this point, if the carbon content is high enough to produce a significant concentration of martensite, the result is an extremely hard but very brittle material. Often, steel undergoes further heat treatment at a lower temperature to destroy some of the martensite (by allowing enough time for cementite, etc., to form) and help settle the internal stresses and defects. This softens the steel, producing a more ductile and fracture-resistant metal. Because time is so critical to the end result, this process is known as tempering, which forms tempered steel. Other materials are often added to the iron-carbon mixture to tailor the resulting properties. Nickel and manganese in steel add to its tensile strength and make austenite more chemically stable, chromium increases the hardness and melting temperature, and vanadium also increases the hardness while reducing the effects of metal fatigue. Large amounts of chromium and nickel (often 18% and 8%, respectively) are added to stainless steel so that a hard oxide forms on the metal surface to inhibit corrosion. Tungsten interferes with the formation of cementite, allowing martensite to form with slower quench rates, resulting in high speed steel. On the other hand sulfur, nitrogen, and phosphorus make steel more brittle, so these commonly found elements must be removed from the ore during processing. When iron is smelted from its ore by commercial processes, it contains more carbon than is desirable. To become steel, it must be melted and

reprocessed to remove the correct amount of carbon, at which point other elements can be added. Once this liquid is cast into ingots, it usually must be "worked" at high temperature to remove any cracks or poorly mixed regions from the solidification process, and to produce shapes such as plate, sheet, wire, etc. It is then heat-treated to produce a desirable crystal structure, and often "cold worked" to produce the final shape. In modern steelmaking these processes are often combined, with ore going in one end of the assembly line and finished steel coming out the other. These can be streamlined by a deft control of the interaction between work hardening and tempering.

Alnico
Alnico alloys are composed primarily of aluminium, nickel and cobalt (hence the term al-ni-co) with the addition of iron, copper, and sometimes titanium. Alnico alloys make strong permanent magnets. They can be magnetized to produce strong magnetic fields. Of the more commonly available magnets, only rare-earth magnets such as neodymium and samariumcobalt are stronger. Alnico magnets produce magnetic field strength at their poles as high as 1500 gauss (0.15 tesla), or about 3000 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field. Alnico alloys have some of the highest Curie points of any magnetic material, around 800 C. This property, as well as its brittleness and high melting point, is the result of the strong tendency toward order due to intermetallic bonding between aluminium and its other constituents. Alnico magnets are used in electric motors, electric guitar pickups, sensors, loudspeakers, and cow magnets. Alnico is produced by casting or sintering processes. Some types of Alnico are isotropic, meaning they can be efficiently magnetized in any direction. Other types, such as Alnico 5 and Alnico 8,

are anisotropic, meaning that they have a preferred direction of magnetization, or orientation. Anisotropic alloys generally have greater magnetic capacity in their preferred orientation than isotropic types. Anisotropic Alnico magnets are oriented by heating them above a critical temperature, and cooling them in the presence of a magnetic field

Nickel silver
Nickel silver is a metal alloy of copper with nickel and often but not always zinc. It is named for its silvery appearance, and contains no elemental silver. Other common names for this alloy are German Silver, Paktong, New Silver and Alpacca (or Alpaca).

Composition
There are many different formulations of alloys which fall within the general term of "Nickel Silver". All contain copper, nickel and zinc, while some formulations may additionally include antimony, tin, lead or cadmium. A representative industrial formulation (Alloy No.752) is 65% copper, 18% nickel, 17% zinc. In metallurgical science, such alloys would be more properly termed nickel bronze. Some nickel silver alloys, especially those containing high proportions of zinc, are stainless. Nickel-silver alloys are commonly named by listing their percentages of copper and nickel, thus "Nickel Silver 55-18" would contain 55% copper, 18% nickel, and 27% other elements, most probably entirely zinc. A two-element alloy may be named for its nickel content alone, thus NS12 is 88% copper and 12% nickel.

Fernico
Fernico is an alloy of Iron (Fer), Nickel (Ni) and Cobalt (Co). The abbreviations form the name which is (or was) a trademark. The alloy has the same linear coefficient of expansion of certain types of glass, and thus makes an ideal material for the lead out wires in light bulbs and thermionic valves.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

www.alloys.com www.azom.com www.gurunet.com www.chem4kids.com

INDEX
INTRODUCTION PROPERTIES CLASSIFICATION TERMINOLOGY
LIST OF ALLOYS

DURALUMIN (ALLOY OF ALUMINIUM) PIG IRON (ALLOY OF IRON) STEEL (ALLOY OF IRON) ALNICO (ALLOY OF ALUMINIUM, NICKEL, COBALT) NICKEL SILVER (ALLOY OF NICKEL) FERNICO (ALLOY OF IRON (FER), NICKEL (NI) AND
COBALT (CO))

BIBLIOGRAPHY