The addition of copper in HSLA steels has been found to greatly benefit the strength levels of steels used for among other applications, offshore structures, pipelines and ship hulls.
In combination with copper additions, low carbon content is also essential for attaining the desired effects and during the last three decades, research has also extended to comparing the benefits of hot rolling versus quenching and tempering to make further gains in quality of the material properties.
Category Archives: Copper
Copper Bearing HSLA Steel: Part One
The benefits of standard HSLA steels mean that materials with good combinations of strength toughness and weldability can be produced, all at a very reasonable cost.
During the early 20th century, experimentation began to see what impact copper would have as an alloying element. The results showed significant further improvement in the overall mechanical properties of the materials including a higher resistance to fatigue crack growth.
Continue reading
Copper Alloys Applications in Electrical Engineering
Copper has sufficient strength, ductility and hardness for these applications at operating temperatures up to 100°C. For many other applications, however, the demands of electrical technology require copper to have higher mechanical properties and to be capable of use at elevated operating temperatures while still retaining the good conductivity for which it is selected in the first place.
Therefore, a large variety of high copper alloys has been developed, whose properties are equal to or, in some cases, higher than those of many other engineering metals, yet, which have conductivities high enough for electrical applications.