On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon with improved strength steel pizza stone fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron.

Many other elements may be present or added. Iron is the base metal of steel. The carbon in typical steel alloys may contribute up to 2. Steel was produced in bloomery furnaces for thousands of years, but its large-scale, industrial use began only after more efficient production methods were devised in the 17th century, with the introduction of the blast furnace and production of crucible steel. Today, steel is one of the most commonly manufactured materials in the world, with more than 1.

The noun steel originates from the Proto-Germanic adjective stahliją or stakhlijan ‘made of steel’, which is related to stahlaz or stahliją ‘standing firm’. The carbon content of steel is between 0. Carbon contents higher than those of steel make a brittle alloy commonly called pig iron. Plain carbon-iron alloys with a higher than 2.

Iron is commonly found in the Earth’s crust in the form of an ore, usually an iron oxide, such as magnetite or hematite. All of these temperatures could be reached with ancient methods used since the Bronze Age. Even in a narrow range of concentrations of mixtures of carbon and iron that make steel, several different metallurgical structures, with very different properties can form. Understanding such properties is essential to making quality steel. The carbon no longer fits within the FCC austenite structure, resulting in an excess of carbon. There are many types of heat treating processes available to steel. The most common are annealing, quenching, and tempering.

Annealing is the process of heating the steel to a sufficiently high temperature to relieve local internal stresses. It does not create a general softening of the product but only locally relieves strains and stresses locked up within the material. Quenching involves heating the steel to create the austenite phase then quenching it in water or oil. This rapid cooling results in a hard but brittle martensitic structure. The steel is then tempered, which is just a specialized type of annealing, to reduce brittleness.