How to pick the right type of steel.

Rule of thumb for beginners: Use what others use. In "Introduction to Materials", you should have learned what type of steel is used for what purpose.
After that, there's Stahlschlüssel (Key to steels).
Michael Dahms

Thank you, I will try to get hold of the "Introduction to materials". We've been introduced to segments of the Stahlschl=FCssel, personally I love the german engineering books, but unfortunately it's not so popular here among the younger lectors. Though I was hoping there existed an 'selection of materials 101'-algorithm :-)
Thank you for your help. Christian

Bookstores list books available on "Materials Selection".
of Materials Selection for Engineering Design, The (Hardcover) by Pat L. Mangonon
Standards for Building Materials & Systems: Design Criteria and Selection Data (Hardcover) by Donald Watson "
of Materials Selection Handbook of Materials Selection by Myer Kutz (Hardcover - Jul 22, 2002)
There are a number of older works as well.
Hit the library and the bookstores.
Good luck.

Materials selection charts ( ) are a simple way of showing which class of material is good for what you want. If you've already decided on steels, you can still use this sort of approach to identify a grade if you have tabulated data about the properties. For a given problem, you can narrow down the range of acceptable materials using some absolute constraints on the properties of the material you want (e.g. corrosion rate, some derived mechanical parameters based on the maximum load you want to lift or hold). Then, decide on something to be maximised or minimised, such as the overall cost of the assembly, and derive a 'performance index' based on this. For example, if you use a weaker material you might need more of it to do the same job, so your performance index might be (strength / cost-per-unit-weight), which should be maximised. Depending on the geometry of your loading (especially if bending is involved), various terms in your performance index might need to be squared or cubed. For steels, strength and cost are the main variables, while stiffness and density tend to be similar. If you're using pre-formed sections, you can also incorporate some kind of 'shape factor' into your performance index, a scalar parameter that characterises things like resistance to bending of a certain profile shape, usually relative to a solid rod of circular cross section.
Joe