ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with mechanical properties such as tensile strength, yield strength and percentage elongation, hardness, creep and fatigue strength, ductile to brittle transition temperature, and fracture strength of unalloyed niobium. The 100-h stress rupture tests tend to exhibit primary creep of several percent, a steady-state creep rate of 10-6 per second, and a third or more of the test life in the tertiary stage. Niobium has a broad spectrum of applications in a variety of different forms: as an alloying element in iron and steel, as a constituent in superalloys and in alloys used in the nuclear industry, as niobium-based alloys, and as unalloyed niobium and niobium chemicals and compounds. Niobium and niobium-based alloys can be joined by mechanical joining or fusion, as well as by resistance welding and brazing.
