2024-11-22
Stainless steel-Is Stainless Steel Magnetic?
This sounds complicated, but it isn’t. Imagine that the atoms that make up the steel are arranged in little cubic boxes. Now, imagine that these boxes have an atom at each of their eight corners. For the body-centered cubic arrangement, the little box has one extra atom in the middle of the box (inside the body, hence the name). This means that the bcc arrangement has 9 atoms per unit. Conversely, the face-centered cubic arrangement has one atom at the center of each side. There are six sides, so this arrangement has 14 atoms per unit.The fcc atomic arrangement is inherent to austenitic metals. It is non-magnetic, while the bcc atomic structure is prevalent in ferritic metals, which are magnetic. Including manganese, nickel, nitrogen, and carbon in an alloy tends to favor fcc atomic structure. These elements are all present in 304 stainless steel.