ABSTRACT
In the last few decades, very rapid development of engineering materials has taken place, resulting in a huge number of commercially available materials with a wide spectrum of properties. This chapter provides simplified introduction to engineering materials. It provides a short discussion of the important material properties in manufacturing as an introduction to the description of the different material groups. Forming from the solid material state can be carried out by mass-conserving processes, mass-reducing processes, or joining processes. Industrially, mass-reducing processes based on fracture are the most important, as they include all the cutting processes. The suitability of a material for cutting processes is often called its machinability. Machinability, which depends on many different material properties, is a measure of how well the interaction between the cutting tool and the material takes place.
