Engineering Manufacture OCR R109 Practice Test

Mixing two or more metallic elements to create a material with enhanced properties is called an alloy. By combining metals, you can tailor characteristics like strength, hardness, wear resistance, or corrosion resistance to exceed what a single metal can offer. Steel, for example, is iron with carbon added to increase strength, and stainless steel includes chromium and other elements to resist rust. This is the general category for such mixtures, not a specific example. A stainless steel is a particular alloy, iron is a pure element, and a non-ferrous metal refers to metals that do not contain iron.