Abstract

This chapter gives an overview on the various types of stainless steels and their general classification based on microstructures. This chapter also goes through briefly the history of the discovery of ‘stainlessness’ and the status quo of stainless steels production in several major economies. Motivations for writing this book and some of the new applications that utilise stainless steels (which are covered in chapter 10) are given at the end of this chapter.