Outokumpu Oyj, 2013. — 92 p.The world consumption of stainless steels has shown a more or less constant increase of 6 % per annum since the middle of the 20th century. The rapidly increasing number of applications has led to a need among engineers, designers and materials specifiers for an introduction to stainless steel which provides basic and readable information. This need will at least partly be fulfilled by the present handbook. The handbook is also aimed to be useful to students by providing a complement to the general and often limited information on stainless steels in the existing student literature.
The reader will become acquainted with the commodity stainless steel grades and also introduced to the most common specialty steels, e.g. the modern weldable duplex grades with reduced alloying content and increased strength. The handbook gives a broad view of the properties of different types of stainless steels, their production and physical metallurgy, applications of stainless steels and fabrication techniques. It also reflects the rapidly increasing
use of stainless steels in load bearing constructions, such as bridges and buildings, where the low maintenance costs, high recycling ratio and thus low environmental impact and carbon footprint
contributes to a sustainable society.
This handbook has been written by a group of specialists at Outokumpu, with each person contributing their special competence. It can act as an introduction to the other stainless steel
handbooks produced by Outokumpu, such as the Welding Handbook, the Corrosion Handbook and the handbook Machining of Stainless, in which more in depth knowledge is presented.
It is our hope that after reading the handbook you should have a reasonably clear picture of the variety and the versatility of the most important available stainless steels on the market today,
keeping in mind the constantly on-going development work within Outokumpu and elsewhere. We have strived to provide technical objective knowledge and not to include subjective marketing.
