Advantages and Disadvantages of Carbon Steel Plate

Carbon steel plate is one of the most commonly used steel material. It can be found in many industries such as general manufacturing, light industry, construction, automobiles, transportation, energy, etc. It is easy to fabricate and relatively cheap in price, making it popular in many different countries.

[edit] Advantages

There are several advantages to choosing carbon steel plate over other steel.

• Robust Construction: Carbon steel plate, has a higher concentration of carbon than other types of steel, generally between 0.02%-2.11%, which can solidify the metal’s interior structure and enhance strength. And as the percentage of carbon gets larger, the steel will become harder.
• Good Mechanical Properties: Carbon plate can be cut, welded, or processed easily due to its good abrasion resistance and machinability. While carbon steel can still stress and break under pressure, it’s less likely to occur than with other types of steel.
• Various Specifications: Carbon steel plate is available in a wide selection of thicknesses, sizes, grades, and types. This not only expands product selection, but also helps you pick the best one to fit your projects.
• Wide Applications: This material can be used in many applications, from small household items to structural frames, wires, automobile components, surgical instruments, bolts, stampings, cranks, gears, bars, spring steel, railway tracks, cookware, pipelines, fencing, nails, etc.
• Affordability: It is cheaper than galvanized steel, galvalume steel, aluminium, or stainless steel, making it a popular metal used by many manufacturing companies.

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Disadvantages =

But there are also some disadvantages:

• The increase in carbon content always has two effects: increasing strength and decreasing plasticity of steel. Therefore, high carbon steel plates can be difficult to work with. They can’t be easily bent or molded into different shapes, thus limiting its utility in certain applications.
• Corrosion protection performance is not good. Carbon steel is more susceptible to rust and corrosion when exposed to moisture and oxygen. This is because it has no protective coating on its surface. In order to improve this ability, most carbon steel products will be galvanized for higher corrosion resistance. In view of this, many manufacturers use it as substrate for many galvanized and galvalume steel products.

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