1. Introduction to Materials

There has been a major development in the material research and applications in industrial and commercial components or products. With the increase in demand of customers for various customized products that need to be durable, functionally reliable and low cost at the same time. These requirements motivate designers and manufacturers to tackle for the challenging task of optimizing the control factors that determines the quality of the final product. Material is one of the control factors that has been extensively analysed since the industrial revolution began using various material tests as described in Chap. 2. In this chapter, the properties, compositions and characteristics of different materials have been described in detail under the heading of all engineering materials used presently in industries and structural works. The production procedure of these materials, processes for heat treatments for altering properties of the material and applications of these materials are described in detail in this chapter.