noun
- Plural of martensite; a hard, brittle crystalline structure formed in steel and other alloys when they are cooled rapidly from high temperature.
Usage: technical; metallurgy
Examples
- The rapid cooling of the steel produced martensites that increased its hardness.
- Engineers studied the formation of martensites in the alloy to improve its strength.
- Different cooling rates result in varying amounts of martensites in the final material.
- The martensites in the quenched steel made it more brittle than the original structure.
- Metallurgists examine martensites under a microscope to understand the material's properties.