The steel grade generally adopts the combination of letters, chemical element symbols and Arabic numerals to represent the name, purpose, characteristics and process of steel products.
The classification of various steels, according to their chemical composition or properties, has been developed for many years by national standardization organizations (sods), such as European EN standards, American ASTM standards and AISI standards, Japanese JIS standards, Chinese GB standards, international ISO standards, etc.
In general, steel is classified based on the following:
Chemical composition: such as carbon steel, low alloy steel and stainless steel
Smelting method: such as open hearth steel, converter steel and electric furnace steel
Processing technology: such as hot rolled steel and cold rolled steel
Product shape: such as thick plate, thin plate, strip, pipe and profile, etc
Deoxidation methods: such as killed steel, semi killed steel and boiling steel
Microstructure: such as ferritic steel, pearlitic steel and martensitic steel
Strength level: for example, the tensile strength of A420 grade C in ASTM standard is between 515mpa and 655mpa
Heat treatment process: such as annealing, quenching, tempering and thermomechanical processing
According to the carbon content, steel is often divided into the following three categories:
Mild steel, such as AISI 1005 to AISI 1026, IF, HSLA, TRIP, and TWINsteel
Medium carbon steel, e.g. AISI 1029 to AISI 1053
High carbon steel, e.g. AISI 1055 to AISI 1095
In addition, according to the European standard classification, steel can be divided into the following categories:
Non alloy steel, such as ENDC01-DC06; S235; S275
Alloy steel, such as 2CrMo4 and 25CrMo4,
Stainless steel
Tool steel, e.g. EN1545; AISI/SAE W110; EN 1.2436, AISI/SAE D6
Plate and strip
Electrical steel plates and strips, such as EN0890 and EN 1.0803
Sometimes special brands may have different characteristics due to different standards.
For example, 34CrMo4 is jointly defined by DIN and EN. There are six specifications (subgroups) in EN, but there are different specifications in DIN.
These steel specifications report changes in tensile properties due to various thermomechanical treatments.
P.S: For your convenience checking the steel grades chart and aluminum grades chart, we also prepared you the .xls version, which is much better than PDF version.
Hi, I'm Shane—founder of MachineMfg. I have worked in the metalworking industry for more than 10 years. I do a lot of thinking, reading, and writing around sheet metal fabrication, machining, mechanical engineering, and machine tools for metals.
