Steel is iron that removed most of the impurities and contains a consistent concentration of carbon. Those impurities like phosphorus, sulfur, silica, oxygen, nitrogen, and copper weaken steel significantly. Steel is one the most recyclable material in the world because of it economically favorable and the process does not downgrade it but make it same again. Steel is sometimes also referred to as iron alloy but that would include wrought iron and cast iron.

Introduction

Cast iron posses higher content of carbon(2% to 4%) and impurities which make it hard, brittle and non-malleable whereas wrought iron with low carbon content less than 0.08% are more malleable and higher tensile strength. The famous Eiffel Tower in France was mainly built from this wrought iron and was once held the tallest man-made structure in the world. Wrought iron was once favorite material to be used on structure building but now is greatly replace with mild steel because of advanced technology. All this was to thank Bessemer converter in the 19th century and the following advanced improvement which makes the production of steel much more economical and quicker. The advantages of steel over other iron alloy is greater balanced in tensile strength, ductility, and versatility.

Applications

Steel is normally separated into two type, one is carbon steel and another stainless steel. Carbon steel or plain-carbon steek is the most productive steel in steel manufacturing. Carbon steel is the composition of mostly iron and carbon. It can be classified into 4 type by the difference of carbon contained in it, low-carbon steel(0.05%-0.30%), medium-carbon steel(0.3%-0.8%), high-carbon steel(0.8%-2.0%), and ultra-high-carbon steel(3.25%-4%). Low-carbon steel or normally refer to as mild steel is the most common form of carbon steel because the price is much more economical and able to use on many applications. Mild steel is so versatile because it's easy to work with, ductile and less brittle. After a form or shape is made, carburizing can be applied to the mild steel to increase its surface hardness. It usually used to make structural steel like roof covering, reinforced cement concrete, rail track, transmission towers, etc. High carbon steel has a greater hardness than low carbon steel and also able to withstand shocks and vibrations. It has great in strength so it was usually used for making tools such as drills, cutting tools, heavy machinery, etc. Unlike stainless steel, most carbon steel has poor corrosion resistance so corrosive environment is not recommended unless certain protective coating, waterproofing or paint is used.

Acrylic or acrylic glass is also known by its trade name Crylux, Plexiglas, Perspex, Acrylite, and Lucite or the scientific name Polymethyl Methacrylate(PMMA). The acrylic is a transparent plastic that often uses as the replacement for glass as it has characteristics of lightweight and also shatterproof. The material can also be used as a casting resin to make waterproofing, translucent effect, etc. Some modern painting can be found contain acrylic as the acrylic doesn't dissolve in a humid environment and hence able to protect the painting.

Introduction

Acrylic glass has the characteristic of high transparency, high tensile strength, high flexibility, polishable, heat and chemical resistance, and UV tolerance. Although most acrylic glass tends to be brittle when under high impact force but the material itself is much more light and stronger than most glass and able add color and texture to the surface. When the acrylic glass surface contains any scratches it would only need a simple polish and the scratch will be gone. Furthermore, acrylic is more favorable to be export since is stronger than glass and lesser in weight which is very ideal for e-commerce.

Gypsum is an evaporite mineral that looks like white sand and usually found in massive beds that appear in pink, yellow or gray due to impurities. Although gypsum is usually the material that used to make drywall, the mineral itself actually contains a large amount of water which make the chemical composite is CaSO4 2H2O which similar to Anhydrite(CaSO4). The reason behind this is that the water in gypsum the is in crystalline form which ends up making individual molecules of gypsum to be dry. These crystalline water also provide the gypsum with a very good fire-resistance. When a gypsum product is getting hot, the crystalline water will destabilize and begin vaporizing as the water reaches its boiling point resulting in product cooling hence protecting product itself. The construction product that uses gypsum is usually excellent in sound insulation, heat insulation, and fire-resistance. The gypsum can also produce in a paste form to harden or solidified certain product or material. Gypsum usually uses in the manufacturing of wallboard(drywall, gypsum board), cement additive, plaster of Paris(pasty composition), hardening retarder in portland cement, etc.

Polyethylene(PE) is a common polymer in plastics. It was widely used in our daily life for many different purposes. PE is usually produced in different grade for different usage. HDPE or high-density polyethylene was composed of mostly linear polymers. This linear form has the better characteristic on tighter, denser and more organized structures compare to Medium-density polyethylene (MDPE) and Low-density polyethylene (LDPE). HDPE is a harder plastic with a high melting point and sinks in the alcohol-water mixture. HDPE is also good at electrical insulation, cold resistance, chemical stability, resistant to corrosion, wear resistance and high tensile strength. This material is commonly recycled and has an SPI resin ID code of 2. HDPE can be produced in a different color but the original is translucent. It is widely used in today's, piping, geomembranes, containers, plastic lumber(PL), etc.

Polymer foam or generally refer as foam in construction term is a solid or liquid product that formed from a polymer material. The solidity of foam is dependent on the amount of air bubble or air tunnels in it when mixing the solid and gas phase of the polymer material. It is a very versatile material ranging from food containers to sound insulation material for room or building.

Introduction

The common polymer that made up this foam includes polystyrene (PS), polyurethane (PU), polyethylene (PE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP), etc. This kind of material is so widely used because they are usually low in density, lightweight and can be made into a flexible or rigid product. Certain polymer materials also able to provide the extra feature of thermal resistant, sound insulation, shock absorption, moisture resistance, etc. Although polymer foam is very useful in many fields, it raises a concern in construction for it's usually not being environmentally friendly and not a green product.

Applications

One of the most common forms is the soundproof foam or some also refer to acoustic foam. The foam is usually in egg box style like damping structure is design to increase the distance between source and receiver by acting as a noise barrier to damping the sound wave. Soundproofing foam does not entirely block the sound through a panel or wall but rather good at reducing the echoes in a room. Although there are still better soundproofing methods like sheetrock and brick materials, adding mass and renovate a complete room or house are not likely to be happening if you want a fast and economical solution. The foam can be made in several different thickness, sizes, and colors. It is commonly attached to wall, ceiling and also a door. Certain soundproofing foam also got the extra feature of fire retardants which slow down or stop the fire spread. Commonly Space or room that commonly using this foam is the gymnasium and also the music studio.

Geosynthetics refers to a synthetic product that made from a polymeric material that helps in most civil engineering purposes. The polymers that manufacture the geosynthetic product are mainly polyethylene(PE), polypropylene(PP), polyvinyl chloride(PVC), polystyrene(PS), polyethylene terephthalate(PET), polyamide Nylon(PA).

Introduction

In overall, geosynthetics usually provide the important functions of separation, drainage, moisture barrier, reinforcement, and filtration. The installation is usually placed inside the soil, surface or as a separation layer of different soil which eventually strengthening or protecting the soil from erosion. The application of geosynthetic is usually found on transportation, environmental, marine, geotechnical and other infrastructure such as bridge, railroad, waste landfill, revetments, canals, etc. Geosynthetics contain many products with different function so in general, these synthetic products are separated into geotextiles, geogrids, geonets, geomembranes, geocomposites, and others.

Applications

Geotextiles is one of the largest produce geosynthetics. They are indeed produced as the traditional way of textiles but the difference is that the material is synthetic fiber rather than silk, cotton, flax, ramie or wool. The production method results on geotextile porous to water flow and enables it to provide the major function of strengthening and protecting the soil by draining the water in it without mixing or losing the soil. Geotextiles are usually lightweight, easy to work with, high tensile strength, corrosion resistance and mildew resistant. However, normal geotextiles usually have a low UV resistance so a direct UV radiation will easily be aging the product. Often adding coating or avoid direct sunlight exposure will preserve its durability and wear resistant. Geotextile is commonly produced in sheet form(packaged in roll form) and after it produces it can be made into other useful product such as geotextile sandbag.

Aluminium is a shiny metal element that conducts heat and electricity very well. This metal is so malleable that is able to form in various shapes and size due to its ductility. Although aluminium electric conductivity is not as good as copper, the heat conductivity it poses are better than copper that makes it a good material for making cookware. Furthermore, a bare wire of aluminum is less than the weight of a bare of copper wire which also results in a much more inexpensive alternative.

Brick is one of the common building material that is usually used for wall, flooring, decoration or any related masonry construction. Bricks consider as one of the strongest and long-lasting building materials because many of ancient building that still standing or exists right now are mostly made from bricks. They are usually laid and bond in patterns to make a durable and strong structure like a wall, column or beam. The thing that keeps them bond together is usually workable paste like mortar. After the structure is formed, the surface is usually rough and uneven so plastering is needed to smooth out the surface before any painting can be done.

Cement is usually the binder material to produce one of the oldest and most common building material concrete. Concrete is the composition of cement, sand, gravel, and water. It is so versatile that it can be seen anywhere especially in the urban city infrastructure like bridges, station, roads, docks, skyscrapers, buildings, etc. Its usually has a high compressive strength and last very long. The Colosseum of Rome that was largely built with concrete can still be seen and standing even after thousands of years.

Introduction

Concrete mixture can come in a ready-mix form which is manufactured from a batch plant and send to a site or a precast factory either in plastic state or dry state. They are usually transported by heavy machine like an in-transit mixer and the volumetric concrete mixer. Ready-mixed concrete(RMC) is usually more quality assured because they are placed under controlled environment and mix with a consistent amount and quality material. To built a reinforced concrete just add in the rebar steel before pouring cement mixture. Furthermore, on-site mixing concrete usually causes more pollution for the area and required more time and cost for onsite mixing. Another common material of cement is the mortar or refer as masonry cement. This paste material is used to do masonry construction for the brick, block, stone, tile to form a structure like a wall, slab, roof, beam, column, etc. Mortar is usually the composite material of aggregates and cement. Mortar and concrete can be sell in a pack like cement and just adds water to start to use it.

Architectural glass is the usage of glass as the building material. Glass is also referred to as silicate glasses because it is mainly made up of silica and other side minerals like soda and lime. Mixing the mineral, smelt it, shape it according to needs, cooling and finally a glass is formed.

Introduction

Glass is a very popular in many building and home design. This is because of the optical transparency that a glass posses and also flexibility to shape into any form. Glass are differentiated to many types for its versatility. Porcelain and also polymer thermoplastic have many similarities with glass and often become the alternative choices. Glass product is usually heavier than a polymer glass(Acrylic Glass, Polyethylene Terephthalate, Polycarbonate) so the polymer glass act as a lighter alternative glass.

Fibreglass might be confused with another material, called as FRP (Fiber-reinforced plastic) in the market, but they are both different materials and meaning. FRP might not be using fibreglass since it can apply cellulose fibres or carbon to substitute it. Fibres will be organized without a proper pattern, can be claimed as a random form which is woven into fabric or being flattening to form chopped strand mat (also addressed as a sheet). In the construction industry as well as the production sector, FRP application seems to be popular as its durability is undoubtedly advantaged by its light in body weight while the properties are robust. At the same time, the strength-to-weight ratio is relatively attractive as in, they can do up to seven times better than steel. Comparing it to other materials such as aluminium, it has some obvious winning points from the perspective of characteristics.

Technically speaking, it is awesome when you have installed it to places where receive of frequent impact, vibration and loads at a place that structural burden cannot be higher than original designed level. They are also good in resisting to wide varieties of chemicals, heat and foreign damages. Further inaction, once the perform is solidified, it can be located to the drawing tower during production that allows long strands to be pulled on the fibre. This complicated chain of processes are the key and essential one to make this end product's strength boosted with transparency effect. Fibreglass has a long shelf life, service period, waterproof and its greatest performances can be said to last it nearly 10 years without major maintenance required. It can be used for both indoor and outdoor where it exposes to sunlight's Ultraviolet (UV) ray without deterioration.

ACP is also known fully as an aluminium composite panel, where it is produced by two sheets of thin aluminium to a core of polymer. It was formed originally from rolling form of aluminium material, it comprises of few layers that will be bonded as a whole in order to have multiple layers, that sandwich structure is cored laminate. In addition to the facade, it can be used in the industrial sector as a structural panel. Anyhow, it can be manufactured and be addressed as a composite panel even though by other elements. There are several raw materials in the gameplay for the composite panels, such as ceramic, metal, glass, wood, plastic or any other range of fibre-based composite materials. Many claims that two major panel of composite applicable for a wall as well as a roof, divided into single or twin panels.

A composite panel is getting more and more common in the building sector as technology advances since the outlook steel or timber-alike kind of range is still eye-catching when you walk across the street. But instead of using the real steel, the wood of solid, the support structurally and strength values are equal when installing it to similar places. Various classical one available in the market is inclusive of fibreglass, aluminium and wooden oriented. All of these units offer the same materials with several layers, but in between slotted in with core lighter in weight materials, forming a sandwich and therefore also called a sandwich panel. The outer and core are acting as protective, highly correlated in term of strength. For instance, polyethylene is the one acting as the core.

The coating as per mentioned is for surfacing on a substrate or to an object for both functional or decoration. The coating can be done layer-by-layer overlapping or just partly without covering the area of the subject. There are corrosion protective coating, which is very common in industrial application such as palm oil, water infrastructure, piping, tank, oil and gas. The processing plant is having the biggest market when coming to industrial since it comprises of a wide range of varieties from fabricated product, tube, platform, its buildings as well as both indoor and outdoor. Furthermore, the machine might have long-running hours with the exposure of many foreign damages such as heat, coldness, acidic, alkali, steam air, gases, discharge, solvent, waste, toxic and more.

There are also potentially other wears and tear happen due to the harsh working environment of equipment, making coating introduction from research and development (R&D) seem more than essential to be existing consistently. Scientific studies found out that engineers who specializes in only doing invention for coating make a lot of money because they really solve the industrial and building problems. Nevertheless, the uprising brands for more and more coating in different categories contributed to lowering of prices, benefiting to the end-user and production plant owner. The formula of the coating can be re-challenged and always logical to put more resources by a chemical supplier in those tax-deductible R&D activities, they hire a lot of engineers for such publishing of frequent new efficient products into the industries.

Polycarbonate is one of the plastics that can offer superiority in resistance against electrical, heat, water and more. At the same time, its stability in the shape, size, pattern are in aligned with its toughness and malleability. Furthermore, it brings no heavy burden to many buildings in term of structural due to its lightweight-to-size ratio while did not compromising the strength when compare it with a similar product. Nevertheless, the balancing of all properties makes it wins over all the other types within the same breakdown for optimal material. Many of the facade designs will apply polycarbonate sheet as their priority due to its leading transparency, or at least the premium clarity from the optical aspect. It is lowering down the cost of the building when bills of electricity are concerned, as a preferred layer for insulating.

There are several ways to bend majority of polycarbonate in the production factory, these are inclusive of hotline bending for instance; bending technique that involves heating it up, very suitable to be applied on sheet bending that is thicker. Polycarbonate has a high viscosity, and therefore the processing will make sure the reading can be reduced. The polymer will be heated up to carry on melting into the pre-set mould at relatively high temperature, cooling thereafter will then complete the intended properties and its shape. Ordinary polycarbonate sheet will basically be having a hundred seventy celcius to two hundred and twenty-five celcius for vacuum forming and mechanical forming, pre-heating is on the other hand at the clamping frame is recommended to be ranged from one hundred twenty to one hundred and thirty celcius.

Brass is widely applied to many sectors, from retail, industrial, commercial to construction. It has a relatively gold colour and bright appealing outlook. Although it can be presented in a silvery-white or reddish-gold, by adjusting the composition of all of their internal elements will decide the difference. For instance, putting in more of zinc will make silver-alloy while rosy colour toning can be done through the better ratio of copper. Brass has better malleability compared to zinc as well as bronze. Many musical instrumental tools use brass as their core material because it has a high level of properties in term of acoustic. Furthermore, the frictional of this metal is quite low too. Sparking will not be happening too often and therefore, suitable for machining works where lowered chance to sparking material is needed.

In addition, the heat energy used for this alloy for workability requires lesser than other, since it has a melting point that is comparably low while it conducts heat and transfers them easier than other products. In regards to semi or finished product, brass can actually be not tolerating towards corrosion and hence, it is a very corrosive-resistant partner that can be used in saltwater through proper treatment (for instance, galvanic corrosion can be resisted). As per mentioned, the casting ability of brass also makes it an attractive point to be used in any scenarios since its malleability is relatively convenient. Since brass like other metals, can be recycled and reproduced into other economically sound products, its non-ferromagnetic attribute makes it simpler to carry on separation when mingling with other metal wastes.

There are several kinds of pipe come in different standard length, diameter and thickness that can be further subdivided into many other secondary specialized materials, with a wide range of specification. For instance, there are metallic pipe, plastic-based pipe and cement pipe. The metallic pipe was being addressed through its raw materials from iron and steel and can be comprised of carbon steel, mild steel, stainless steel, raw unfinished steel, ductile iron, lacquer or black steel, brass steel, galvanized steel and more. If the pipe surface is not treated further with coating, it will subject to the risk of corrosion in which affecting the strength of the piping. However, it is all depending on the application, exposure to what kind of environment and the properties of fluid or gas.

Then, we have the cement pipe and commonly also known as asbestos cement pipe or transite pipe that made up of asbestos fibres as well as cement. This material based will definitely achieve corrosion-resistant and usually installed in the gas pipelines or drainage setup for infrastructure or factories. The popular one in the market which is effective in project execution is called a prestressed concrete pipe and it has basically prestressed concrete non-cylinder and lined cylinder pipes. Subsequently but the last, we have the plastic pipe that can be fabricated for the purposes of barrier, solid wall, transmission or structure. The examples of this category are consisting of CPVC (post chlorinated polyvinyl chloride), ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), PB-1 (polybutylene), HDPE (High-density polyethene), uPVC (unplasticized polyvinyl chloride) or more.

Road pavement is very important to make vehicle, pedestrian as well as heavy machinery to mobilize on top of it with higher security. The properly paved road can act as decoration, practical sustainable movement support to promote longevity of the wheel, vehicle's body, passengers, foot of human as well as stability. Of course, many villages are still yet to develop the right pavement due to the budget in many states of the third world or developing countries. Anyhow, if a financial resource is not really an issue to the government with stable tax and other incomes from the domestic production, a healthy amount of infrastructure's part for the government will fork out the necessary working value for road paving.

The coverage of roads shall be as wide as possible to make sure citizen enjoy what they have paid off in term of income tax, sales & services tax or any specific taxes such as imported goods, stamp duty, alcohol or cigarette tax or more to the government tax department. The road is also an essential defence to any nation as tanks, troops or any armoured vehicles can move smoothly and promptly when in crisis. Definitely, police, ambulance and fire brigade those important team can also mobilize within borders of states, cities and towns quicker from a point to another point for greatest service to people. Transportation of goods, trading, logistics, construction materials as well as people can also be achieved at efficient cost.

A lot of choices can be done to a properly laid floor, from tiled, stone, mere concrete or cement to vinyl, carpet, wooden or any synthetic floor treatment. In term of floor coating, we have the common one including epoxy, polyurethane, anti-static, heavy load resistant, scratch-resistant and more. Depending on the nature of the property, outdoor or indoor, temperature and chemical exposure or more. For instance, if you wish to put on vinyl, you can still apply a coating of sealer or anti-slip on it. While discolouration of any flooring material such as a wooden floor or laminated finishes can be also polished through professional's special blended chemical with their proper application.

Working on flooring shall always consult the floor expert as it might do harm more than benefit when merely putting unusual Do-It-Yourself painting and workmanship on it. You will hurt the floor surface while damaging your underlayment whilst getting more budget to rectify afterwards, do it gently without experienced application does the same too. Flooring products such as granite, marble or other expensive and premium materials even worse when work by your own trying to save cost. Engage with your nearest contractor and designer, or at least some suppliers with a showroom to explore further, since they will have applicator or authorized floor installers to recommend for you.