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]

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

Gold ore from Boundary Red Mountain Mine,

Washington, US
Egyptian metal workers

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 furnace,
a process known as smelting. The first
evidence of this extractive 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,

"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 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.

Mining areas of the ancient Middle East. Boxes colors:

arsenic is in brown, copper in red, tin in grey, iron in
reddish brown, gold in yellow, silver in white and lead in
black. Yellow area stands for arsenic bronze, while grey
area stands for tin bronze.

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
Philistines.[5][12]

It is stated that metallurgy is the second

oldest profession of mankind, but for this
there are no proof.

Historical developments in ferrous

metallurgy can be found in a wide 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
 

Furnace bellows operated by waterwheels, Yuan

Dynasty, China.

Aluminium plant in Žiar nad Hronom (Central Slovakia)

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
in a form supporting separation enables
the desired metal to be removed from
waste products.
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.

Alloys

Casting bronze

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
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.
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 as well as to
improve the product's aesthetic
appearance. It is also used to make
inexpensive metals look like the more
expensive ones (gold, silver).[19]
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, 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.[20]

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,[21]
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.

Metallography allows the metallurgist to study the

microstructure of metals.

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.

Crystallography, often using diffraction of

x-rays or electrons, is another valuable tool
available to the modern metallurgist.
Crystallography allows 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" . in The Great Soviet
Encyclopedia. 1979.
2. Oxford English Dictionary, accessed
29 January 2011.
3. "History of Gold" . 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" (PDF). World
Archaeology. 20 (3): 403–421.
doi:10.1080/00438243.1989.9980081
. JSTOR 124562 .
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. .
 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 .
8. Neolithic Vinca was a metallurgical
culture Stonepages from news
sources November 2007
9. Moorey 1994: 294
10. Craddock 1995: 125
11. Potts, Daniel T., ed. (15 August 2012).
"Northern Mesopotamia" . 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 . p. 15.
 doi:10.5962/bhl.title.33301 .
16. "Metal Hardness Tests: Difference
Between Rockwell, Brinell, and
Vickers" . 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" .
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. "How electroplating works" . Explain
that Stuff.
20. "What is Shot Peening – How Does
Shot Peening Work" .
www.engineeredabrasives.com.
21. "Thermal Spray, Plasma Spray, HVOF,
Flame Spray, Metalizing & Thermal
Spray Coating" .
www.precisioncoatings.com. Saint
Paul, MN. Retrieved 13 December
2017.

External links
 Wikisource has the text of the 1879
American Cyclopædia article
Metallurgy.

  Media related to Metallurgy at

Wikimedia Commons
  Learning materials related to
Topic:Metallurgical engineering at
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Iron metallurgy in the north of Spain

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