I know that carbon steels and alloy steels are different but are carbon steels still alloys?Thanks!
Carbon steel, or plain-carbon steel, is a metal alloy. It is a combination of two elements, iron and carbon. Depending upon the amount of presence of carbon in the alloy, Carbon steel can be classified into 4 different categories- Low Carbon Steel Medium Carbon Steel High Carbon Steel Very High Carbon Steel
Carbon steels are alloys. This is evident in the carbon-iron phase diagram:
Yes. it's an alloy of iron and carbon. Carbon steel can either mean plain carbon steel which is steel that doesn't have significant amounts of other elements, like chromium, manganese, or molybdenum. It can also be used to refer to ANY steel that is NOT a stainless steel. Alloy steel is any steel that has greater than 1% of other elements added to it besides carbon. Stainless steel might be in a certain sense be considered alloy steel but I think most people in the steel business consider it as it's own separate material from carbon steels. Many stainless steels contain only trace amounts of carbon, so they should rightly be considered iron-chromium alloys, not steel, which by default refers to iron-carbon alloys. Note that nearly all modern carbon steels also contain 0.2%-0.5% manganese and silicon. Even steels that are otherwise considered plain carbon and not alloy steels. Mn and Si are added because they prevent defects in cast steel ingots, and hot rolled items like billets and plates. However at low levels they don't affect the properties of the steel greatly.
