Effects of Alloying Elements in Steel

Steel is basically iron alloyed to carbon with certain additional elements to give the required
properties to the finished melt. Listed below is a summary of the effects various alloying
elements in steel.

Carbon
Manganese
Chromium
Nickel
Molybdenum
Titanium
Phosphorus
Sulphur
Selenium
Niobium
Nitrogen
Silicon
Cobalt
Tantalum
Copper

Carbon
Carbon is the primary hardening element in steel.
Hardness and tensile strength increases as carbon content increases up to about
0.85% C.
Ductility and weldability decrease with increasing carbon.

Manganese
Manganese is added to steel to improve hot working properties and increase
strength, toughness and hardenability.
 It is generally beneficial to surface quality especially in resulfurized steels.
Increasing the manganese content decreases ductility and weldability & Hot
Shortness.

Chromium
Chromium is added to the steel to increase oxidation resistance & corrosion
resistance.
Chromium is added to low alloy steels to increase hardenability & to improve strength
at higher temperatures.

Sulphur
When added in small amounts sulphur improves machinability.
Sulphur decreases ductility and notch impact toughness especially in the transverse
direction.
When Sulphur content increases, Weldability decrease.

Phosphorus
Phosphorus when added with sulphur improves machinability in low alloy steels.
Phosphorus, in small amounts, aids strength and corrosion resistance.
Phosphorus additions are known to increase the tendency to cracking during
welding.
Phosphorus increases and hardness and decreases ductility and notch impact
toughness of steel.

Nickel
Nickel is added to high chromium stainless steel to form the most important class of
corrosion and heat resistant steels.
It enhances toughness and high strength at both high and low temperatures.
Nickel also improves resistance to oxidation and corrosion.
Nickel increases the hardenability and impact strength of steels.

Selenium
Selenium is added to improve machinability.

Molybdenum
Molybdenum, when added to chromium-nickel austenitic steels, improves resistance.
 When added to low alloy steels, molybdenum improves high temperature strengths
and hardness.
It enhances the creep strength of low-alloy steels at elevated temperatures.

Niobium (Columbium) & Tantalum

Niobium is added to steel in order to stabilise carbon.
Niobium increases the yield strength and tensile strength of carbon steel.
Niobium can also have a moderate precipitation strengthening effect and thus
improves strength & toughness.

Nitrogen
Nitrogen has the effect of increasing the austenitic stability of stainless steels.
Yield strength is greatly improved when nitrogen is added to austenitic stainless
steels.

Silicon
Silicon strengthens low alloy steels.
Silicon imparts special magnetic properties to iron base alloys.
Silicon presence results in finer grains and improved ductility.
Silicon improves scaling resistance of stainless steels.
In low-carbon steels, silicon generally affects surface quality.

Cobalt
Cobalt becomes highly radioactive when exposed to the intense radiation of nuclear
reactors
Cobalt increases strength and hardness and permits higher quenching temperatures.
Cobalt also intensifies the individual effects of other major elements in a more
complex steel.

Copper
Copper is added to a few alloys to produce precipitation hardening properties.
Copper negatively affects forge welding, but does not seriously affect arc or
oxyacetylene welding.
Copper affecs surface quality.
Copper is beneficial to atmospheric corrosion resistance when present in amounts
exceeding 0.20%.

Titanium
The main use of titanium as an alloying element in steel is for carbide stabilization,
this tends to minimize the occurrence of inter-granular corrosion.
 Titanium is used to retard grain growth and thus improve toughness and ductility in
transverse bending.
Titanium is also used to achieve improvements in inclusion characteristics.

Boron
It is added to improve hardenability.

Lead
It is added to improve machinability.

Note: lead is insoluble in liquid or solid steel. It is added by mechanical dispersion during
pouring.

Aluminium
It is used as deoxidizer.

It is used to control grain size.

Zirconium
Used to achieve improvements in inclusion characteristics.

Improves toughness & ductility in transverse bending.

Vanadium
It increases the yield strength and the tensile strength of carbon steel.
Vanadium is one of the primary contributors to precipitation strengthening in
microalloyed steels.
When thermomechanical processing is properly controlled the ferrite grain size is
refined and there is a corresponding increase in toughness.
The impact transition temperature also increases when vanadium is added.

toughness