ABSTRACT
The management of a material’s property is dependent on understanding how that material will react to changes in the environment and composition. What state the material is in at any given time corresponds to what one would expect the material to be capable of. In the study of metals and ceramics, phase diagrams are used to depict the conditions of the material with respect to temperature and composition. These diagrams give us a picture of temperature ranges for forging and casting operations, solubility limits for increasing properties by alloying, and understanding the effect of contaminating elements. They also help interpret the microstructure for quality control or failure analysis.
