| Bright Dipping | (english) Chemical polishing of aluminum, often by treatment with a mixture of nitric acid and phosphoric acid, yielding a mirror-shiny (specular) highly reflective surface. It is almost always followed by anodizing to protect the surface and provide some choice of color. |
| Bright Drawing | (english) The process of drawing hot rolled steel through a die to impart close dimensional tolerances, a bright scale free surface and improved mechanical properties. The product is termed bright steel. |
| Brine | (english) A saltwater solution for quenching or cooling when heat treating steel. |
| Brinell Hardness | (english) The hardness of a metal or part, as represented by the number obtained from the ratio between the load applied on the spherical area of the impression made by a steel ball forced into the surface of the material tested. |
| Brinell Hardness Number | (english) The value of hardness of a metal on an arbitrary scale representing kg/mm2, determined by measuring the diameter of the impression made by a ball of given diameter applied under a known load. Values are expressed in Brinell Hardness Numbers, BHN |
| Brinell Hardness Testing | (english) Method of determining the hardness of materials; involves impressing a hardened ball of specified diameter into the material surface at a known pressure (10-mm ball, 500-kg load for aluminum alloys). The Brinell hardness number results from calculations involving the load and the spherical area of the ball impression. Direct-reading testing are generally used for routine inspection of forgings, and as a heat treat control function. |
| Brittle Fracture | (english) Fracture with little or no plastic deformation. |
| Brittle Inter-metallic Layer | (english) An iron-zinc alloy layer formed between the steel substrate and the free zinc of galvanized coatings. |
| Brittleness | (english) The tendency of a metal or material to fracture without undergoing appreciable plastic deformation. |
| Broach | (english) A long, tapered cutting tool with serrations which,when forced through a hole or across a surface, cuts a desired shape or size. |