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Metallurgy

Smelting, a basic step in obtaining usable

quantities of most metals.

Casting; pouring molten gold into an ingot.

Gold was processed in La Luz Gold Mine (pictured) near Siuna, Nicaragua, until 1968.

Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of
metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. Metallurgy is used to
separate metals from their ore. Metallurgy is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to the
production of metals, and the engineering of metal components for usage in products for consumers and
manufacturers. The production of metals involves the processing of ores to extract the metal they contain, and the
mixture of metals, sometimes with other elements, to produce alloys. Metallurgy is distinguished from the craft of
metalworking, although metalworking relies on metallurgy, as medicine relies on medical science, for technical
advancement. The science of metallurgy is subdivided into chemical metallurgy and physical metallurgy.

Metallurgy is subdivided into ferrous metallurgy (also known as black metallurgy) and non-ferrous metallurgy (also
known as colored metallurgy). Ferrous metallurgy involves processes and alloys based on iron while non-ferrous
metallurgy involves processes and alloys based on other metals. The production of ferrous metals accounts for 95
percent of world metal production.[1]

Contents
Etymology and pronunciation
History
Extraction
Alloys

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Production
Metalworking processes
Heat treatment
Plating
Shot peening
Thermal spraying
Microstructure
See also
References
External links

Etymology and pronunciation

Metallurgy derives from the Ancient Greek μεταλλουργός, metallourgós, "worker in metal", from μέταλλον, métallon,
"mine, metal" + ἔργον, érgon, "work".

The word was originally an alchemist's term for the extraction of metals from minerals, the ending -urgy signifying a
process, especially manufacturing: it was discussed in this sense in the 1797 Encyclopædia Britannica.[2] In the late
19th century it was extended to the more general scientific study of metals, alloys, and related processes.

In English, the /mɛˈtælərdʒi/ pronunciation is the more common one in the UK and Commonwealth. The
/ˈmɛtəlɜːrdʒi/ pronunciation is the more common one in the US, and is the first-listed variant in various American
dictionaries (e.g., Merriam-Webster Collegiate, American Heritage).

History
The earliest recorded metal employed by humans appears to be gold, which
can be found free or "native". Small amounts of natural gold have been
found in Spanish caves used during the late Paleolithic period, c. 40,000
BC.[3] Silver, copper, tin and meteoric iron can also be found in native
form, allowing a limited amount of metalworking in early cultures.[4]
Egyptian weapons made from meteoric iron in about 3000 BC were highly
prized as "daggers from heaven".[5]

Certain metals, notably tin, lead, and at a higher temperature, copper, can
be recovered from their ores by simply heating the rocks in a fire or blast
Gold ore from Boundary Red
furnace, a process known as smelting. The first evidence of this extractive Mountain Mine, Washington, US
metallurgy, dating from the 5th and 6th millennia BC,[6] has been found at
archaeological sites in Majdanpek, Jarmovac near Priboj and Pločnik, in
present-day Serbia. To date, the earliest evidence of copper smelting is
found at the Belovode site near Plocnik.[7] This site produced a copper axe
from 5500 BC, belonging to the Vinča culture.[8]

The earliest use of lead is documented from the late neolithic settlement of
Yarim Tepe in Iraq,
Egyptian metal workers
"The earliest lead (Pb) finds in the ancient Near East are a
6th millennium BC bangle from Yarim Tepe in northern Iraq
and a slightly later conical lead piece from Halaf period

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Arpachiyah, near Mosul.[9] As native lead is extremely rare,

such artifacts raise the possibility that lead smelting may
have begun even before copper smelting."[10][11]

Copper smelting is also documented at this site at about the same time period (soon after 6000 BC), although the use
of lead seems to precede copper smelting. Early metallurgy is also documented at the nearby site of Tell Maghzaliyah,
which seems to be dated even earlier, and completely lacks pottery.

Other signs of early metals are found from the third millennium BC in places like Palmela (Portugal), Los Millares
(Spain), and Stonehenge (United Kingdom). However, the ultimate beginnings cannot be clearly ascertained and new
discoveries are both continuous and ongoing.

In the Near East, about 3500 BC, it was discovered that by combining
copper and tin, a superior metal could be made, an alloy called bronze.
This represented a major technological shift known as the Bronze Age.

The extraction of iron from its ore into a workable metal is much more
difficult than for copper or tin. The process appears to have been invented
by the Hittites in about 1200 BC, beginning the Iron Age. The secret of
extracting and working iron was a key factor in the success of the Mining areas of the ancient Middle
Philistines.[5][12] East. Boxes colors: arsenic is in
brown, copper in red, tin in grey, iron
It is stated that metallurgy is the second oldest profession of mankind, but in reddish brown, gold in yellow,
silver in white and lead in black.
for this there are no proof.
Yellow area stands for arsenic
Historical developments in ferrous metallurgy can be found in a wide bronze, while grey area stands for
tin bronze.
variety of past cultures and civilizations. This includes the ancient and
medieval kingdoms and empires of the Middle East and Near East, ancient
Iran, ancient Egypt, ancient Nubia, and Anatolia (Turkey), Ancient Nok, Carthage, the Greeks and Romans of ancient
Europe, medieval Europe, ancient and medieval China, ancient and medieval India, ancient and medieval Japan,
amongst others. Many applications, practices, and devices associated or involved in metallurgy were established in
ancient China, such as the innovation of the blast furnace, cast iron, hydraulic-powered trip hammers, and double
acting piston bellows.[13][14]

A 16th century book by Georg Agricola called De re metallica describes the highly developed and complex processes of
mining metal ores, metal extraction and metallurgy of the time. Agricola has been described as the "father of
metallurgy".[15]

Extraction
Extractive metallurgy is the practice of removing valuable metals from an
ore and refining the extracted raw metals into a purer form. In order to
convert a metal oxide or sulphide to a purer metal, the ore must be reduced
physically, chemically, or electrolytically.

Extractive metallurgists are interested in three primary streams: feed,

concentrate (valuable metal oxide/sulphide) and tailings(waste). After
mining, large pieces of the ore feed are broken through crushing and/or
grinding in order to obtain particles small enough where each particle is
either mostly valuable or mostly waste. Concentrating the particles of value Furnace bellows operated by
waterwheels, Yuan Dynasty, China.
in a form supporting separation enables the desired metal to be removed
from waste products.
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Mining may not be necessary, if the ore body and physical environment are
conducive to leaching. Leaching dissolves minerals in an ore body and
results in an enriched solution. The solution is collected and processed to
extract valuable metals.

Ore bodies often contain more than one valuable metal. Tailings of a
previous process may be used as a feed in another process to extract a
secondary product from the original ore. Additionally, a concentrate may
contain more than one valuable metal. That concentrate would then be
processed to separate the valuable metals into individual constituents. Aluminium plant in Žiar nad Hronom
(Central Slovakia)

Alloys
Common engineering metals include aluminium, chromium, copper, iron,
magnesium, nickel, titanium and zinc. These are most often used as alloys.
Much effort has been placed on understanding the iron-carbon alloy
system, which includes steels and cast irons. Plain carbon steels (those that
contain essentially only carbon as an alloying element) are used in low-
cost, high-strength applications where weight and corrosion are not a
problem. Cast irons, including ductile iron, are also part of the iron-carbon
system.

Stainless steel or galvanized steel is used where resistance to corrosion is Casting bronze
important. Aluminium alloys and magnesium alloys are used for
applications where strength and lightness are required.

Copper-nickel alloys (such as Monel) are used in highly corrosive environments and for non-magnetic applications.
Nickel-based superalloys like Inconel are used in high-temperature applications such as gas turbines, turbochargers,
pressure vessels, and heat exchangers. For extremely high temperatures, single crystal alloys are used to minimize
creep.

Production
In production engineering, metallurgy is concerned with the production of metallic components for use in consumer
or engineering products. This involves the production of alloys, the shaping, the heat treatment and the surface
treatment of the product. Determining the hardness of the metal using the Rockwell, Vickers, and Brinell hardness
scales is a commonly used practice that helps better understand the metal's elasticity and plasticity for different
applications and production processes.[16] The task of the metallurgist is to achieve balance between material
properties such as cost, weight, strength, toughness, hardness, corrosion, fatigue resistance, and performance in
temperature extremes. To achieve this goal, the operating environment must be carefully considered. In a saltwater
environment, ferrous metals and some aluminium alloys corrode quickly. Metals exposed to cold or cryogenic
conditions may endure a ductile to brittle transition and lose their toughness, becoming more brittle and prone to
cracking. Metals under continual cyclic loading can suffer from metal fatigue. Metals under constant stress at elevated
temperatures can creep.

Metalworking processes
Metals are shaped by processes such as:

1. Casting – molten metal is poured into a shaped mold.

2. Forging – a red-hot billet is hammered into shape.
3. Rolling – a billet is passed through successively narrower rollers to create a sheet.
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4. Laser cladding – metallic powder is blown through a movable laser beam (e.g. mounted on a NC 5-axis machine).
The resulting melted metal reaches a substrate to form a melt pool. By moving the laser head, it is possible to
stack the tracks and build up a three-dimensional piece.
5. Extrusion – a hot and malleable metal is forced under pressure through a die, which shapes it before it cools.
6. Sintering – a powdered metal is heated in a non-oxidizing environment after being compressed into a die.
7. Machining – lathes, milling machines and drills cut the cold metal to shape.
8. Fabrication – sheets of metal are cut with guillotines or gas cutters and bent and welded into structural shape.
9. 3D printing – Sintering or melting amorphous powder metal in a 3D space to make any object to shape.
Cold-working processes, in which the product's shape is altered by rolling, fabrication or other processes while the
product is cold, can increase the strength of the product by a process called work hardening. Work hardening creates
microscopic defects in the metal, which resist further changes of shape.

Various forms of casting exist in industry and academia. These include sand casting, investment casting (also called
the lost wax process), die casting, and continuous castings. Each of these forms has advantages for certain metals and
applications considering factors like magnetism and corrosion.[17]

Heat treatment
Metals can be heat-treated to alter the properties of strength, ductility, toughness, hardness and/or resistance to
corrosion. Common heat treatment processes include annealing, precipitation strengthening, quenching, and
tempering.[18] The annealing process softens the metal by heating it and then allowing it to cool very slowly, which
gets rid of stresses in the metal and makes the grain structure large and soft-edged so that when the metal is hit or
stressed it dents or perhaps bends, rather than breaking; it is also easier to sand, grind, or cut annealed metal.
Quenching is the process of cooling a high-carbon steel very quickly after heating, thus "freezing" the steel's
molecules in the very hard martensite form, which makes the metal harder. There is a balance between hardness and
toughness in any steel; the harder the steel, the less tough or impact-resistant it is, and the more impact-resistant it is,
the less hard it is. Tempering relieves stresses in the metal that were caused by the hardening process; tempering
makes the metal less hard while making it better able to sustain impacts without breaking.

Often, mechanical and thermal treatments are combined in what are known as thermo-mechanical treatments for
better properties and more efficient processing of materials. These processes are common to high-alloy special steels,
superalloys and titanium alloys.

Plating
Electroplating is a chemical surface-treatment technique. It involves bonding a thin layer of another metal such as
gold, silver, chromium or zinc to the surface of the product. This is done by selecting the coating material electrolyte
solution which is the material that is going to coat the workpiece (gold, silver,zinc). There needs to be two electrodes of
different materials: one the same material as the coating material and one that is receiving the coating material. Two
electrodes are electrically charged and the coating material is stuck to the work piece. It is used to reduce corrosion
[19][20] as well as to improve the product's aesthetic appearance[21]. It is also used to make inexpensive metals look like
the more expensive ones (gold, silver).

Shot peening
Shot peening is a cold working process used to finish metal parts. In the process of shot peening, small round shot is
blasted against the surface of the part to be finished. This process is used to prolong the product life of the part,
prevent stress corrosion failures, and also prevent fatigue. The shot leaves small dimples on the surface like a peen
hammer does, which cause compression stress under the dimple. As the shot media strikes the material over and over,

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it forms many overlapping dimples throughout the piece being treated. The compression stress in the surface of the
material strengthens the part and makes it more resistant to fatigue failure, stress failures, corrosion failure, and
cracking.[22]

Thermal spraying
Thermal spraying techniques are another popular finishing option, and often have better high temperature properties
than electroplated coatings.Thermal spraying, also known as a spray welding process,[23] is an industrial coating
process that consists of a heat source (flame or other) and a coating material that can be in a powder or wire form
which is melted then sprayed on the surface of the material being treated at a high velocity. The spray treating process
is known by many different names such as hvof, plasma spray, flame spray, arc spray, and metalizing.

Microstructure
Metallurgists study the microscopic and macroscopic properties using
metallography, a technique invented by Henry Clifton Sorby. In
metallography, an alloy of interest is ground flat and polished to a mirror
finish. The sample can then be etched to reveal the microstructure and
macrostructure of the metal. The sample is then examined in an optical or
electron microscope, and the image contrast provides details on the
composition, mechanical properties, and processing history.
Metallography allows the
Crystallography, often using diffraction of x-rays or electrons, is another metallurgist to study the
valuable tool available to the modern metallurgist. Crystallography allows microstructure of metals.
identification of unknown materials and reveals the crystal structure of the
sample. Quantitative crystallography can be used to calculate the amount
of phases present as well as the degree of strain to which a sample has been subjected.

See also
Archaeometallurgy
CALPHAD
Carbonyl metallurgy
Cupellation
Experimental archaeometallurgy
Goldbeating
Gold phosphine complex
Metallurgical failure analysis
Mineral industry
Pyrometallurgy

References
1. "Металлургия" (http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/bse/108584/%D0%9C%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%
BB%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B8%D1%8F). in The Great Soviet Encyclopedia. 1979.
2. Oxford English Dictionary, accessed 29 January 2011.
3. "History of Gold" (http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest/history_gold.html). Gold Digest. Retrieved 4 February
2007.
4. E. Photos, E. (2010). "The Question of Meteoritic versus Smelted Nickel-Rich Iron: Archaeological Evidence and
Experimental Results" (http://img2.tapuz.co.il/forums/1_132972987.pdf) (PDF). World Archaeology. 20 (3): 403–
421. doi:10.1080/00438243.1989.9980081 (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F00438243.1989.9980081). JSTOR 124562
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/124562).
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5. W. Keller (1963) The Bible as History. p. 156. ISBN 0-340-00312-X

6. H.I. Haiko, V.S. Biletskyi. First metals discovery and development the sacral component phenomenon. //
Theoretical and Practical Solutions of Mineral Resources Mining // A Balkema Book, London, 2015, р. 227-233. (h
ttps://www.crcpress.com/New-Developments-in-Mining-Engineering-2015-Theoretical-and-Practical-Solutions/Bon
darenko-Kovalevska-Pivnyak/9781138028838).
7. Radivojević, Miljana; Rehren, Thilo; Pernicka, Ernst; Šljivar, Dušan; Brauns, Michael; Borić, Dušan (2010). "On
the origins of extractive metallurgy: New evidence from Europe". Journal of Archaeological Science. 37 (11):
2775. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2010.06.012 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.jas.2010.06.012).
8. Neolithic Vinca was a metallurgical culture (http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/002605.html) Stonepages
from news sources November 2007
9. Moorey 1994: 294
10. Craddock 1995: 125
11. Potts, Daniel T., ed. (15 August 2012). "Northern Mesopotamia" (https://books.google.ca/books?id=P5q7DDqMbF
0C&pg=PA302). A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. 1. John Wiley & Sons, 2012. p. 302.
ISBN 978-1-4443-6077-6.
12. B. W. Anderson (1975) The Living World of the Old Testament, p. 154, ISBN 0-582-48598-3
13. R. F. Tylecote (1992) A History of Metallurgy ISBN 0-901462-88-8
14. Robert K.G. Temple (2007). The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention (3rd edition).
London: André Deutsch. pp. 44–56. ISBN 978-0-233-00202-6.
15. Karl Alfred von Zittel (1901). History of Geology and Palaeontology (http://www.geology.19thcenturyscience.org/b
ooks/1901-Zittel-HistGeol/htm/doc.html). p. 15. doi:10.5962/bhl.title.33301 (https://doi.org/10.5962%2Fbhl.title.33
301).
16. "Metal Hardness Tests: Difference Between Rockwell, Brinell, and Vickers" (https://www.esict.com/blog/rockwell-b
rinell-and-vickers-metal-hardness). ESI Engineering Specialties Inc. 14 June 2017. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
17. "Casting Process, Types of Casting Process, Casting Process Tips, Selecting Casting Process, Casting Process
Helps" (http://www.themetalcasting.com/casting-process.html). www.themetalcasting.com. Retrieved
13 December 2017.
18. Arthur Reardon (2011), Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist (2nd edition), ASM International, ISBN 978-1-61503-
821-3
19. "A Novel & Cost-Effective Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold (ENIG) Surface Finish for Better Reliability of
Electronic Assemblies" (https://www.smta.org/knowledge/proceedings_abstract.cfm?PROC_ID=5346#7). Lilotree.
SMTA International. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
20. "ENIG-Premium is the surface finish solution which resolves ENIG's "black pad" problem" (http://www.lilotree.com/
news/enig-premium-black-pad-newsletter). Lilotree. Retrieved 1 August 2019.
21. "ENIG-premium: Reliability with rose gold shine" (http://www.lilotree.com/news/rose-gold-flyer). Lilotree. Retrieved
18 October 2018.
22. "What is Shot Peening – How Does Shot Peening Work" (https://www.engineeredabrasives.com/what-is-shot-pee
ning.html). www.engineeredabrasives.com.
23. "Thermal Spray, Plasma Spray, HVOF, Flame Spray, Metalizing & Thermal Spray Coating" (http://www.precisionc
oatings.com/what-is-thermal-spray.html). www.precisioncoatings.com. Saint Paul, MN. Retrieved 13 December
2017.

External links
Media related to Metallurgy at Wikimedia Commons
Learning materials related to Topic:Metallurgical engineering at Wikiversity
Iron metallurgy in the north of Spain (https://patrimoniuindustrial.com/en/siderometallurgy/)

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