Tour 3: Searching by chemical composition
Chemical composition is basic building block for identifying materials. It is often essential for identifying material, its corrosion resistance, welding and processing technology.
Oxford Instruments Grade Database can search and select materials by their chemical composition. From thousands of materials, you can instantly identify the material you are looking for.
Combination of several elements can be given as a search condition, and it can be combined with the other criteria, to select the material that exactly matches your requests.
Step 1: Choosing a search option
Suppose that you want to select French (AFNOR) steels with chrome (Cr) content between 8 and 12% and carbon (C) content between 0.05 and 0.3%.
First you have to choose the right search option. To select materials by chemical composition (elements: Cr and C), use Advanced Search.
Step 2: Defining search criteria
To define the search criteria, you select France (AFNOR NF) from the country's pop-up list. To define chemical composition criterion, check Cr and C, thus enabling fields for values. Then enter 8 for minimum and 12 for maximum Cr value and 0.05 for minimum and 0.3 for maximum C value.
After you click Submit button, Oxford Instruments Grade Database will find all French materials that fulfil given criteria and display them in the list. Among many French materials, search engine selects materials with the carbon between 0.05 and 0.3% and chrome between 8 and 12% in a few seconds! Compare it again with the amount of time you will need if you use books.
Step 3: Selecting a material from the list of the results
Selecting materials by country and group generally results in a list of materials that satisfy criteria you gave.
Depending on given criteria, this list can be quite large (up to 2000 materials), so it is displayed in pages. By using navigation buttons, you can navigate through the pages, jump to the beginning or the end of the list or go to a specific page.
If you are interested in properties of some specific material from the list, you can click on its designation. To find out how to view
material properties, please refer to steps 4, 5 and 6 of Tour 1.