Carbon steel
Steel in which the main interstitial alloying constituent is carbon
Carbon steel (US) or non-alloy steel (Europe) is a steel with carbon content from about 0.05 up to 2.1 percent by weight. The definition of carbon steel from the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) states:
no minimum content is specified or required for chromium, cobalt, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, zirconium, or any other element to be added to obtain a desired alloying effect, or
the specified minimum for copper does not exceed 0.40%, or
the maximum content specified for any of the following elements does not exceed the percentages noted: manganese 1.65%, silicon 0.60%, copper 0.60%.
The addition of significant amounts of other metals, such as nickel, chromium, vanadium, molybdenum, changes the materials definition from carbon steel to alloy steel.
As the carbon content percentage rises, steel has the ability to become harder and stronger through heat treating; however, it becomes less ductile. Regardless of the heat treatment, a higher carbon content reduces weldability. In carbon steels, the higher carbon content lowers the melting point.
High-carbon steel has many uses, primarily applications where medium strength and low material cost are factors, including: high strength steel wires, springs, bolts, garden and agricultural tools, wood chisels and axes.
Properties
Carbon steel is often divided into two main categories: low-carbon steel and high-carbon steel. It may also contain other elements, such as manganese, phosphorus, sulfur, and silicon, which can affect its properties. Low carbon steel can be easily machined and welded, making it versatile and suitable for various applications which require reasonable strength and low material cost such as car body panels, footbridges, hand rails, garden furniture/park benches, nails, gates etc .
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Carbon steel” as steel in which the main interstitial alloying constituent is carbon. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q967996. The Library of Congress control number is sh85020126. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carbon steel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.