Materials and Manufacturing Processes

By Kaushik Kumar, Hridayjit Kalita, Divya Zindani and J. Paulo Davim

This book introduces the materials and traditional processes involved in the manufacturing industry. It discusses the properties and application of different engineering materials as well as the performance of failure tests. The book lists both destructible and non-destructible processes in detail. The design associated with each manufacturing processes, such Casting, Forming, Welding and Machining, are also covered.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Jun 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9783030210663

Kaushik Kumar

Dr Kaushik Kumar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, India. He has 14 years of experience in teaching and research, and over 11 years of industrial experience working for a global manufacturing company. He has 9 patents, has authored/edited 20 books and has 120 international journal publications, and 18 International and 8 National Conference publications to his credit.

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Part IEngineering Materials

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

Kaushik Kumar, Hridayjit Kalita, Divya Zindani and J. Paulo DavimMaterials and Manufacturing ProcessesMaterials Forming, Machining and Tribologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21066-3_1

1. Introduction to Materials

Kaushik Kumar¹  , Hridayjit Kalita¹, Divya Zindani² and J. Paulo Davim³

(1)

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India

(2)

Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Silchar, Silchar, Assam, India

(3)

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

Kaushik Kumar

Email: [e-mail]

Abstract

There has been a major development in the material research and applications in industrial and commercial components or products. With the increase in demand of customers for various customized products that need to be durable, functionally reliable and low cost at the same time. These requirements motivate designers and manufacturers to tackle for the challenging task of optimizing the control factors that determines the quality of the final product. Material is one of the control factors that has been extensively analysed since the industrial revolution began using various material tests as described in Chap. 2. In this chapter, the properties, compositions and characteristics of different materials have been described in detail under the heading of all engineering materials used presently in industries and structural works. The production procedure of these materials, processes for heat treatments for altering properties of the material and applications of these materials are described in detail in this chapter.

1.1 Highlights

In this chapter, the major industrial materials have been classified and discussed in details. The structure, properties, production procedures, heat treatment processes and application of ferrous metals, non ferrous metals, ceramics, polymers, composites, graphite and diamond have been explained in detail.

1.2 Introduction

The products used in our day to day life are all made of one or more than one materials. The properties and behavior of a material (or metal) are mainly influenced by the structure and the arrangement of the atoms in the metal. Variations in the sizes and positions of the atoms in the unit cell, presence of interstitial sites, presence of impurity atoms, grain size, grain boundary, composition of the material and surface characteristics are some of the factors which characterizes the suitability of a material for a product. These micro-structural characteristics of materials can be well modified in case of ferrous metals and few non ferrous metals to synchronize with the desirable properties for better product functioning and durability. These modifications are carried out by adopting a specific production method, heat treatment process and desired composition. With improvement in the knowledge of the material structures and development in the material processing, synthetic materials such as polymers, composites, ceramics have also come to light and are extensively employed in industries today.

The most commonly used industrial materials are ferrous and non ferrous metals. Ferrous metal tools were used by primitives from the early period of 4000–3000 B.C. [1]. And are still considered today as the most important technological development in the history of mankind. Modern system of production of ferrous metal in larger quantity began only in the year 1340 AD with the invention of the blast furnace [1].

Ferrous metals are generally classified into cast iron, wrought iron, steel and alloy steel which find applications in a variety of products due to their better mechanical property, lower cost, easy availability and ease of production. Non ferrous metals such as aluminium, titanium, nickel, magnesium, copper, etc. are more expensive than ferrous metals but finds application in industries due to their refractoriness, corrosion resistance, low density and ease of fabrication.

1.3 Ferrous Metals

All metals and alloys can be mainly classified into two main groups based on the composition of the material. The metal alloys which consist of iron as the main ingredient in the solid mixture are called the ferrous metals. These materials are the most widely used ingredient in any construction and manufacturing jobs and excel in their wide variations in utility and property. They are cheap, have high strength and are abundantly available. The main varieties of the iron based metal are pig iron, wrought iron, cast iron, steels and alloy steel.

1.3.1 Structure

As already known, all metals or non metals are ultimately build up of atoms which consist of protons and neutrons at the nucleus with electrons revolving around it. The factor that determines the characteristic of the material whether it is metallic, non-metallic or semi-metallic, is the number of protons present in the atom. With insufficiency in the total number of electrons in the outer shells and inability to replenish electrons from other electron deficient adjacent atoms, the positive charge in the nuclei dominates, and the remaining electrons are equally shared among all the atomic nuclei. This strong attractive force between the atomic nuclei and electron cloud binds the metal atoms together and distinguishes metallic bonds from all other types of bonds [2].

Ferrous metals obey the same arrangement of atoms in their body as discussed above. With repeated pattern of arrangements of atoms throughout the body, the metal attains a crystalline structure consisting of a combination of multiple crystal lattices. Each crystal lattice is made up of a repeated configuration of atoms known as unit cells. There are basically three types of arrangement of atoms in a crystal lattice, which are body-centred cubic (BCC) lattice, face-centred cubic (FCC) lattice and hexagonal close packed (HCP) crystal lattice [2]. Among the three, the HCP exhibits the highest density and packing factor followed by FCC and BCC. Alpha and gamma iron which forms the basic composition of ferrous metals exhibit BCC and FCC lattice structure respectively.

For pure metal, the above arrangements hold and all the atoms on all unit cells are the same. These pure metals have limited range of properties, which are much inferior to most of the present industrial materials. Alloying is a common practice which involves combination of two elements, one of which must be a metal. They remain in two forms which are solid solution and inter-metallic compounds. Ferrous alloy basically has iron as its main ingredient with other elements for alloying such as carbon in steel.

1.3.2 Properties

Some of the ferrous metals and their properties are described below:

(a)

Cast iron: Cast iron is generally obtained from re-melting of pig iron (detailed in the next section) along with coke, limestone and steel scraps in a cupola furnace. It is an alloy of iron and carbon and is brittle and hard. Since it is brittle, it is weaker in tension and cannot be employed in applications where tensile load is subjected. It also cannot be employed where shock loading is dominant in their service life. Some of the advantageous characteristics of cast iron are high compressive strength, high wear resistance and good machinability. The compressive strength of cast iron ranges from 400 to 1000 MPa which is much higher than their tensile strength which ranges from 100 to 200 MPa [3]. The carbon content in cast iron is either in free form or in combined form. Cast iron can be classified into grey cast iron, white cast iron, alloy cast iron, ductile cast iron, malleable cast iron, nodular cast iron, mottled cast iron and meehanite cast iron [3].

i.

In grey cast iron, the carbon remains in graphite form which gives a grey colour to the material. Some of the properties of grey cast iron are good machinability (better than steel), high vibration damping capacity, good resistance to wear, high fluidity (which enables easy casting of complex parts and thin sections), low ductility and low impact