Non-ferrous Metals and Alloys

Abstract

Although there are very many metallic elements, it is customary to divide metals and alloys into two major categories, ferrous and non-ferrous. The former category covers the element iron and its alloys, while all the other metallic elements (some 70 in number) and their alloys are classified as non-ferrous. The division is not quite as unbalanced as might at first appear, because iron occupies a very special position among metallic materials, owing to its availability, its comparatively low cost, and the very useful ranges of alloys that are formed when iron is alloyed with carbon and other elements. Some 94 per cent of the total world consumption of metallic materials is in the form of steels and cast irons. On the other hand, out of all the non-ferrous metals, only a few, aluminium, copper, lead, magnesium, nickel, tin, titanium and zinc, are produced in moderately large quanties. Many of the other metallic elements play an important part in engineering, both as alloying elements and as metals in their own right. The role of some of these, including beryllium, cobalt, molybdenum and tungsten, as alloying elements in some steels and non-ferrous alloys is mentioned in this and the following chapters but a detailed coverage of the metallurgy of these metals is outside the scope of this volume.