What is Metals Engineering?

In many of my articles and all over my website I talk about applying Metals Engineering (short for Metallurgical Engineering). But I realized that I haven’t formally explained what it is. So, here is an article about Metals Engineering.

Metals Engineering and metallurgy

Metals Engineering is the application of metallurgy (science of metals) to design and manufacturing decisions and problems involving metals. This includes selecting and developing materials for components, selecting and developing manufacturing and assembly processes, evaluating material and component suppliers, and solving component failures and quality issues.

One goal of Metals Engineering is to select metals and develop manufacturing processes that result in products that meet performance and reliability requirements at low cost.

Metallurgy is concerned with understanding the relationship between a metal’s properties and its composition, microstructure, and the manufacturing processes used on a metal. Properties of concern include those related to the following:

• Performance - strength, hardness, stiffness, ductility, electrical conductivity, …
• Reliability - Fatigue, wear, corrosion, …
• Fabrication - stamping, forging, extruding, heat treating, …
• Joining – Welding, soldering, and brazing
• Physical and thermal – density, coefficient of expansion, …
• Cost

Learn more: Metal Conversations podcast episode on metals engineering

Applications of metals engineering

For product design, engineering the metals used in a product involves understanding all the properties requirements for metal components and joints and…

• Selecting metals capable of meeting component and joint properties requirements at low cost. This includes design for reliability and design for manufacturability considerations.
• Evaluating the effects of use conditions on the degradation and reliability of metals being considered for use.
• Writing thorough specifications for the metals to prevent quality and reliability problems.

For manufacturing, engineering the metals used in a product involves …

• Selecting manufacturing and assembly processes and process conditions that result in the desired metal microstructure, resulting in the desired properties.
• Evaluating whether suppliers are capable of consistently providing stock materials and components that meet requirements.

And when there are product failures during testing or use, manufacturing quality problems, and production equipment failures, metals engineering involves…

• Failure analysis of failed components/joints and quality problems to determine the metallurgical issue and possible causes of the metallurgical issue.
• Using the failure analysis results to identify the root cause of the problem.
• Identify measures to prevent the problem from occurring again.

Example of applying metals engineering

Check out the video on this page. It contains a real-world example of the application of metals engineering to the design of a component.

A product is a collection of materials

Every product is made of individual materials manipulated into different shapes and then brought together. So, where metals are used, it seems that there are lots of opportunities to engineer the metals to get the desired properties in components and joints between components.

Trying out metals engineering

And if you’re interested in learning more about metallurgy and metals engineering, here are some next steps:

• Subscribe to my email newsletter to receive updates on new videos, blogs, and podcasts. FORM AT TOP OF THIS PAGE
• Learn metallurgy. Check out our metallurgy courses and videos.
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