The Carbon Steel 1040 - Essay Example

The Carbon Steel 1040 Steel 1040 is a medium-carbon containing medium tensile steel. It is renowned through research and application to offer good strength, toughness, and resistance to wear. This essay will look into the application of Steel 1040 and its physical and chemical properties. It is of utmost importance, as it will reveal the features making it an icon in the engineering sector. Steel 1040 is a medium-carbon engineering steel with a carbon content of between 0.37 and 0.44 it also contains other elements such as manganese, phosphorus, and Sulphur whose maximum contents are 0.9, 0.4, and 0.

5 respectively. The steel is applied in structural engineering where strength is required. This implies areas such as crankshafts, couplings, and cold-headed parts. The steel has been forged at 2300 F down to 1800 F and responds well to heat treatment at 1550-1650 F (Callister, p. 246)The machinability of Steel 1040 has been rated at 60% of 1112 steel alloy. The steel can be formed readily in the annealed condition. It can be hardened by heat treatment, quenching, and tempering to give 150 to 250-KSI tensile strength.

The steel has a density of 0.284 lb. /cubic inch and specific gravity of 7.86. It is available commonly as cold-drawn round bars and hot-rolled round bars. Each of these has different mechanical properties (Callister, p. 245).