Write the various classification of Engineering materials: Almost every substance known to man has found

its way into the engineering workshop at some time or other. The most convenient way to study the properties
and uses of engineering materials is to classify them into ‘families’ as shown in figure below:

Classification of engineering materials.

Ferrous metals
 These are metals and alloys containing a high proportion of the element iron.
 They are the strongest materials available and are used for applications where high strength is required
at relatively low cost and where weight is not of primary importance.
 As an example of ferrous metals such as : bridge building, the structure of large buildings, railway lines,
locomotives and rolling stock and the bodies and highly stressed engine parts of
road vehicles.
Non – ferrous metals
 These materials refer to the remaining metals known to mankind.
 The pure metals are rarely used as structural materials as they lack mechanical strength.
 They are used where their special properties such as corrosion resistance, electrical conductivity and
thermal conductivity are required. Copper and aluminium are used as electrical conductors and, together
with sheet zinc and sheet lead, are use as roofing materials.
 They are mainly used with other metals to improve their strength.
Non – metallic materials
Non – metallic (synthetic materials)
These are non – metallic materials that do not exist in nature, although they are manufactured from natural
substances such as oil, coal and clay.
Non – metallic (Natural materials)
Such materials are so diverse that only a few can be listed here to give a basic introduction to some typical
applications.
 Wood: This is naturally occurring fibrous composite material used for the manufacture of casting
patterns.
 Rubber: This is used for hydraulic and compressed air hoses and oil seals. Naturally occurring latex is
too soft for most engineering uses but it is used widely for vehicle tyres when it is compounded
with carbon black.
 Glass: This is a hardwearing, abrasion-resistant material with excellent weathering properties. It is used
for electrical insulators, laboratory equipment, optical components in measuring instruments eta and, in
the form of fibres, is used to reinforce plastics. It is made by melting together the naturally occurring
materials: silica (sand), limestone (calcium carbonate) and soda (sodium carbonate).
 Emery: This is a widely used abrasive and is a naturally occurring aluminium oxide. Nowadays it is
produced synthetically to maintain uniform quality and performance.
 Ceramic: These are produced by baking naturally occurring clays at high temperatures after moulding to
shape. They are used for high – voltage insulators and high – temperature – resistant cutting tool tips.
 Diamonds: These can be used for cutting tools for operation at high speeds for metal finishing where
surface finish is greater
importance. For example, internal combustion engine pistons and bearings. They are also used for dressing
grinding wheels.
Composite materials (composites)
These are materials made up from, or composed of, a combination of different materials to take overall advantage
of their different properties.
In man-made composites, the advantages of deliberately combining materials in order to obtain improved or
modified properties was understood by ancient civilizations. An example of this was the reinforcement of air-
dried bricks by mixing the clay with straw. This helped to reduce cracking caused by shrinkage stresses as the
clay dried out. In more recent times, horse hair was used to reinforce the plaster used on the walls and ceiling of
buildings. Again, this was to reduce the onset of drying cracks.
Discuss the Phase compositions of the iron-carbon alloys at room temperature:
 Hypoeutectoid steels (carbon content from 0 to 0.83%) consist of primary (proeutectoid) ferrite (according
to the curve A3) and pearlite.
 Eutectoid steel (carbon content 0.83%) entirely consists of pearlite.
 Hyperelltectoid steels (carbon content from 0,83 to 2.06%) consist of primary proeutectoid)cementite
(according to the curve ACM) and pearlite.
 Cast irons (carbon content from 2.06% to 4.3%) consist of proeutectoid cementite CT ejected from austenite
according to the curve ACM , peaiiite and transformed ledeburite (ledeburite in
which austenite transformed 10 pearlite).
Annealing
All annealing processes are concerned with rendering steel soft and ductile so that it can be cold worked and/or
machined. There are three basic annealing processes, as shown in figure 2, and these are:
Stress-relief annealing at subcritical temperatures.
Spheroidised annealing at subcritical temperatures.
Full annealing for forgings and castings.
The process chosen depends upon the carbon content of the steel, its pre treatment processing, and its subsequent
processing and us
a) Stress-relief annealing
It is also called 'process annealing' , 'interstage annealing' and subcritical annealing, it is often used for softening
cold worked low carbon (0.4 % carbon content) steel or mild steel . To fully anneal such a steel would involve
heating to a temperature of more than 900˚C, with consequent high cost. In a mild steel ferrite makes up about
90 % of the structure, and the recrystallisation temperature of cold worked ferrite is only about 500˚C. annealing
a cold worked mild steel in the temperature
range 550 – 600 ˚C will result in complete recrystallisation of ferrite, although the cold worked pearlite will be
largely unaffected.
b) Spheroidised annealing
The Spheroidised condition is produced by annealing the steel at a temperature between 650 and 700 C, just
below the lower critical temperature. During this treatment cementite forms as spheroidal partisles in a ferrite
matrix, putting the steel into a soft, but very tough, condition.
Since the temperature involved are sub critical no phase changes take place and spheroidisation of the cementite
is purely a surface tension effects.
c) Full annealing
It is the treatment given to produce the softest possible condition in a hypoeutectoid steel. It involves heating the
steel to a temperature within the range 30 – 500 C above the upper critical temperatures and then allowing the
steel to cool slowly within the furnace. This produces a structure containing coarse pearlite.
This results in the formation of fine grains of austenite that transform into relatively fine grains of ferrite and
pearlite or pearlite and cementite (depending upon the carbon content) as the steel is slowly cooled to room
temperature, usually in the furnace.
Full annealing is an expensive treatment and when it is not absolutely essential for the steel to be in a very soft
condition, but a reasonably soft and ductile material is required, the process known as
normalizing is used instead.
Normalising
The process resembles full annealing except that, whilst in annealing the cooling rate is deliberately retarded, in
normalising the cooling rate is accelerated by taking the work from the furnace and allowing it to cool in free air.
Provision must be made for the free circulation of cool air, but
draughts must be avoided.
In the normalising process, as applied to hyper-eutectoid steels, it can be seen that the steel is heated to
approximately 50 C above the upper critical temperature line. This ensures that the transformation to fine grain
austenite corrects any grain growth or grain distortion that may have occurred previously. Again, the steel is
cooled in free air and the austenite transforms into fine grain pearlite and cementite. The fine grain structure
resulting from the more rapid cooling associated with normalising gives improved strength and toughness to the
steel but reduces its ductility and malleability. The increased hardness and reduced ductility allows a better
surface finish to be achieved when machining. (The excessive softness and ductility of full annealing leads to
local tearing of the machined surface.)
The type of structure obtained by normalising will depend largely upon the thickness of cross-section, as this will
affect the rate of cooling. Thin sections will give a much finer grain than thick sections, the latter often differing
little in structure from an annealed section. Although highly successful, this procedure tied up an excessive
amount of working capital and space and nowadays heat treatment is preferred as the work in progress is turned
round more quickly.

Fe–C Diagram

The Fe–C metastable diagram, , is one of the most useful tools to study steel transformation and together
continuous cooling transformation (CCT) and isothermal transformation (IT) curves are the basis for
understanding the steel heat treatment process. In this discussion, the portion of the Fe–C diagram representing
0–2.0% C will be emphasized. Ferrous alloys with more than approximately 2% C are designated as cast iron.
However, cast irons are not the focus of this chapter.
Since the carbon range for steel studies lies between 0 and 2%, a simplified version of the Fe–C phase diagram
shown in Figure 6 is typically used. For easy reference, solid solutions that are formed in steels are designated as
austenite when gamma (γ) iron is the solvent and ferrite when alpha (α) iron is the solvent .
Ferrite is a near carbon-free solid solution of one or more elements in a body-centered cubic arrangement. Fully
ferritic steels are obtained only when the carbon content is very low (13–15). These designations refer only to
structures and imply nothing about composition or properties.

Austenite is a microstructural phase characterized by a face-centered cubic iron crystal structure. It is the solid
solution microstructure produced prior to hardening of the steel.

Cementite is another phase observed in Figure 6. It is a brittle compound of iron and carbon (iron carbide) with
the approximate chemical formula Fe3C and is characterized by an orthorhombic crystal structure. When it occurs
as a phase in steel, the chemical composition will be affected by the presence of Mn and other carbide-forming
elements.

Pearlite is a microstructure characterized by a lamellar aggregate of ferrite and cementite. It is formed from
austenite, and the lamellae may be coarse or thin depending on the cooling rate and temperature range where they
are formed (isothermal heat treatment) It is also possible to obtain ferrite and spherical cementite structure;
however, this does not form a lamellar pearlitic microstructure.

Figures 5 and 6 show phase field boundaries marked by critical temperature ranges A1, A3, and ACM. A1 is the
temperature between the two-phase ferrite/cementite field and the temperature at which austenite forms, A3 is the
temperature range between the austenite/ferrite two-phase field and the single-phase austenite field, and ACM is
the temperature range between the austenite/cementite two-phase field and the single-phase austenite field. The
austenite phase field defined by the critical temperatures A3 and ACM and the solidus temperature range shows
that austenite exists over a large temperature/composition range, an observation that holds not only for Fe–C
alloys but also for alloy steels, although the critical temperatures will vary somewhat because of alloying. The
temperatures between A1 and A3 and between A1 and ACM are termed intercritical temperatures and define
respectively the two phase fields austenite/ferrite and austenite/cementite.
Looking at Figure , an austenitic area is observed. This area covers a broad range of composition and temperature
confirming illustrating that the austenitic microstructure is not related to one composition. Alloy steels form
austenite at elevated temperature in the same way as plain carbon steels. The temperature range between the line
A1 (723 °C) and the line A3, or line ACM, 2 phases coexists; austenite and ferrite (between A1 (723 °C) and line
A3), or austenite and cementite (between 723 °C and line ACM).

The steel compositions at approximately 0.8% C is designated as the eutectoid composition. Compositions
containing less than 0.8% C are hypoeutectoid compositions and those containing more than 0.8% C are named
hypereutectoid compositions.

At slow cooling rates, liquid steel solidifies to austenite between the lines liquidus and solidus. Below the solidus
line all of the structure is solidified as austenite. In the case of eutectoid steel, during slow cooling, the austenite
structure is maintained up to line A1 at which time it will transform in pearlite.

At room temperature, the eutectoid composition of steel is formed as pearlite as seen in Figure. During slow
cooling, austenite in hypoeutectoid steels will begin to transform below line A3 since undercooling is necessary
to provide a driving force for the solid-state nucleation process. Between A3 and A1 (723 °C), ferrite is formed
from austenite and austenite is becoming richer in carbon up to 0.8% C at 723 °C, also known as the eutectoid
temperature. Just below this temperature, the remaining austenite transforms to coarse pearlite. For a eutectoid
composition, undercooling is necessary to provide a driving force for the solid-state nucleation process so that at
room temperature the microstructure of hypoeutectoid steel will be composed of ferrite and pearlite. The relative
amount of ferrite and pearlite are dependent on the carbon content and alloying elements in the steel.

During slow cooling of hypereutectoid steels, austenite transformation will begin to transform below the ACM
line. The driving force of this reaction is also undercooling. Austenite begins to transform to cementite around
the grain boundary and the remaining austenite decreases in carbon proportional to the degree of transformation.
At 723 °C, the remaining austenite contains 0.8% C and below the eutectoid temperature transformation to
pearlite occurs. At room temperature, hypereutectoid steels contain cementite as a network around pearlite. The
relative phase composition of cementite and pearlite will vary according to the carbon content and the presence
of alloying elements in the steel.