Lec abae ng Design Guides _ AN INTRODUCTION TO STEEL SELECTION: PART 1, CARBON AND LOW-ALLOY STEELS JHE FOX Published for the Design Council, he British Standards Institution and the Council of Engineering Institutions by Oxford University PressENGINEERING DESIGN GUIDES 34 AN INTRODUCTION TO STEEL SELECTION: PART 1 CARBON AND LOW- ALLOY STEELS J. H. E. Fox, C. Eng. M.I.M. Published for the Design Council, the British Standards Institution, and the Council of Engineering Institutions by Oxford University Press Editorial Advisory Board H. J. H. Wassell (Chairman) 0.B.E. B.Sc. H. G, Conway C.B.E. M.A, Hon.D.Sc. C.Eng. F.IMech.E. F.RAeS. D. H, New E.R.D. F.C.G.I. C.Eng. F.L.C.E. F.1-Mech.E. F.LStruct E. Rear-Admiral D. G. Spickernell C.B, Copyright © Design Council 1979 All rights reserved, No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or ‘otherwise, without the prior permission of the Design Council and Oxford University Press. The Design Council, the British Standards Institution, and the Council of Engineering Institutions, as sponsors of this publi- cation, have made every effort to ensure its accuracy. Final responsibility for its contents rests with the author. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Fox, JHE ‘An introduction to steel selection. ~ (Engineering design guides; no. 34), Part 1: Carbon and low-alloy steels 1. Steel L Title I, Design Council I. British Standards Institution IV, Council of Engineering Institutions V. Series 620.1°7 A472 79-40270 ISBN 0-19-859172-1 Filmset and printed in Great Britain by BAS Printers Limited, Over Wallop, Hampshire Contents Introduction Advent of steel Modern steelmaking processes Solidification Products available Metallurgy and heat treatment Metallurgy Heat treatment Effects of alloying elements Wrought engineering steels Direct-hardening steels Surface-hardening steels Steels for springs Steels for fasteners Tool steels Steel castings Structural steels Constructional steels Pressure-vessel steels Cold-formable steels Manufacturing capabilities Formability Machinability Hardenability Weldability Cost and availability Service considerations Fatigue Effects of temperature Corrosion Safety factors Steel selection Mechanical properties Physical properties Guide to selection Appendix 1. Coding systems for steels specified in British and American standards Appendix 2. Typical applications of steel grades based on BS 970 Appendix 3. Application of tool steels to BS 4659 Appendix 4. General-engineering steel casting grades and typical applications Appendix 5. Surface conditions of cold- formable steels to BS 1449: Part 1 Appendix 6. Summary of mechanical properties of steels Acknowledgements British Standards British Standards for spring steels Sources of further information Bibliography Beary quuw nn 10 I i 12 12 14 14 15 15 16 19 2 22 24 24 25 25 21 27 29 31 32 33 34 41 41 41 42 42Introduction Component design tends to be an evolutionary process, during which the material requirements change, and the choice of a material for any application must necessarily be a compromise be- tween technical, economic, and aesthetic con- siderations. Often a particular steel is chosen because it has given satisfactory performance in similar applications elsewhere, but as the limits of its properties are approached other grades have to be considered. Consequently a comprehensive know- ledge of the range and variety of steels, together with their uses, is required in order to select a steel which will give satisfactory performance. Much written information is available on steels but considerable experience is required in order to select a steel for a particular use. The more critical the application, the greater the care that must be taken with material selection. ‘The purpose of this Engineering Design Guide is to introduce the reader to steel selection and to give an indication of the type of steel that may be considered for a given application. It will be of use to the engineer who needs to have a broad appreciation of the principles involved, but for anything other than the simplest items expert advice should always be sought. However, it will enable the reader to appreciate what is required, present the problem correctly, and to understand the answer. Carbon and alloy steels in general are dealt with, and no attempt has been made to cover the properties of the different grades of steel exhaustively. Wherever possible the reader is referred to British Standards or other works for detail. Advent of steel Tron, which is the most common and useful of the metallic elements, has been exploited for its versa- tility since the end of the Bronze Age (c. 3000 B.C.). Pure iron is a soft malleable metal and is little used commercially unless required for its electrical proper- ties. Steel is essentially an alloy of iron and carbon. The iron which early man discovered was alloyed naturally with carbon and was much harder and more durable than the pure metal. Its main uses were for tools, weapons, utensils and ornaments; as this metal could only be made in small amounts it was prized and even used for coinage. The smith, who worked it, held the secrets of hardening, tempering and softening. The Romans built small bowl-shaped furnaces in which a mixture of iron ore and charcoal was burnt in a forced-air draught. This produced some crude metallic iron mixed with slag, known as bloomery iron and used as the basis of most iron tools for several hundred years. As the process became more efficient, the metallic constituent melted more readily and absorbed more carbon. This material, which was hard but brittle and could only be cast to shape, was known as cast iron. To make a forgeable iron the material was remelted in a furnace and a blast of air blown in to burn out most of the carbon. The resultant pasty mass was hammered to consolidate it and to produce bars of wrought iron. This product was the main structural material of the day and was used for many different engineering constructions. It combined modest strength with great toughness but tended to have variable properties owing to the large amounts of slag and other metallic matter which it unavoidably contained. The invention of the crucible process (c. 1740) made possible the manufacture of larger quantities of steel with more consistent properties. Then, with the patenting of the Bessemer process in 1856, ‘tonnage’ steel became available. Steelmaking processes have continued to develop towards larger sized units and shorter process times. New techniques have been introduced to give greater control and consistency. Modern steelmaking processes The two main processes in use today are basic oxygen steelmaking (BOS) and basic electric arc (BEA). However a considerable quantity of steel is still made by the open hearth (OH) process. In the BOS process, the converter, which is simply a large refractory-lined receiving vessel, is charged with scrap together with molten iron direct from theblast furnace. This is then refined by the chemical action of oxygen applied via a lance to the metal surface; thus unwanted elements such as sulphur and phosphorus are removed and the carbon content is reduced to the required level. Any alloy additions are made either to the charge before the blow or to the ladle during teeming. The BEA process is primarily used to make alloy and special steels, but the process is increasingly used to provide the more common tonnage steels. The furnace consists of a circular refractory-lined bath with a swivelling roof. Three carbon electrodes can be lowered into the furnace through the roof. At the start of the process the furnace is charged with scrap which is then melted by the heat generated by an electric arc struck between the electrodes through the scrap. Refining is achieved by the use of suitable fluxes (such as fluorspar, limestone, and iron ore) which combine with the impurities to form the slag. Oxygen lancing is often used to increase the rate of reaction. When the correct composition of steel has been achieved and any alloying additions made, the slag containing the impurities is either raked or poured off the surface of the molten metal and the steel tapped from the furnace. The OH process is the oldest and slowest steclmak- ing process still in use. The charge, consisting of scrap and molten iron, is heated by gas or fuel-oil burners; impurities are removed with the aid of slag-making fluxes. Because of the restricted heat input it is a slow process compared with the BOS and BEA processes; however oxygen lancing is used to speed up the reaction to some extent. When the refined steel is poured from the furnace, final alloying and composition control can be made by the addition of calculated amounts of either ferro- alloys (ie. alloys of iron with a high proportion of one or more additional elements) or the pure metal. Solidification Asa result of the use of oxygen in steelmaking and of the various steelmaking reactions, the steel as poured is saturated with dissolved oxygen which cannot remain in solution as the metal cools. The oxygen reacts with some of the carbon present to form carbon monoxide which escapes as gas bubbles at the solid-liquid interface of the cooling steel. By careful control of the carbon-oxygen reaction solidified ingots having three different types of internal structure can be produced. These are termed rimmed, balanced, or killed steels (see Fig. 1). In rimmed steel, the gas bubbling is allowed to proceed naturally, so producing a skin (rim) of relatively pure metal on the outside of the ingot. When the required thickness of rim is produced the carbon-oxygen reaction is stopped, usually by adding aluminium to remove the oxygen from solution. Rimming steels are almost all low carbon, low strength steels where formability and surface quality are the prime properties required. In balanced steels, the carbon—oxygen reaction is controlled so that the gas evolved is just sufficient to counteract the shrinkage effects of cooling which would otherwise result in the formation of cavities near the ingot top. Balanced steel is used for large- tonnage constructional steels such as hot-rolled joists, columns, beams, sections, reinforcing bar, and heavy plate. In Killed steel, a solid ingot with no gas bubbles is produced by prevention of the carbon-oxygen reaction. The steel is fully deoxidized using silicon or aluminium, and the top of the ingot is kept liquid in order to feed any shrinkage as it occurs. The resulting ingot is uniform over its whole cross-section. En- gineering steels are invariably produced as killed steels since consistent properties are essential. When molten steel has solidified, it is rolled or formed into basic shapes known as primary products. ‘The main basic shapes, all produced in lengths of 7-10 m, are: (J) slabs (typically 75-250 mm thick, and up to 2000 mm wide), (2) blooms (150-300 mm square), and (3) billets (50-150 mm square). Primary products can be produced in one of two ways—either by casting ingots, which are then soaked to give a uniform temperature throughout before being rolled to the required size, or by continuous casting of molten metal through a water- cooled mould of the required cross-section. The very high rate of heat extraction allows sufficient solidification to take place within the mould to permit continuous withdrawal. The primary product is then formed into the final shapes suitable for sale to manufacturers or fabri- cators. Products available Steel can be purchased in many forms, shapes, and sizes. The controlling factor on any particular size or shape is cost: if sufficient is required it will be economical to have it specially made, if not it will have to be produced either from a larger piece by cutting away the unwanted material, or by putting together smaller and simpler forms. © Fig. 1 Distribution of blow holes and shrinkage cavities im (a) rimmed, (b) balanced, and (c) killed steels