**1. Introduction**

Metals and their alloys of quasi-crystalline structures have been widely used for thousands of years, commencing with the Bronze Age, which took place approximately 3000 down to 100 years, and passing through the Iron Age [1]. Although, the utilization of these common engineering materials, namely ferrous and nonferrous, are still in current use nowadays, however, they are experiencing much concurrence with a range of novel materials and a bewildering array of solid products due to the engineering progress, which essentially depends on the availability and the intelligent use of materials.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

At the present time, there are available for use in excess of 45,000 different metallic alloys [1]. Albeit, the steels and cast irons make up the largest use on a weight basis, the number of different nonferrous alloys exceed the number of ferrous alloys. The primary nonferrous alloys are those in which the base metal consists of either aluminum, copper, nickel, magnesium, titanium, zirconium or zinc [1].

With the introduction of new metallic alloys and the breakthrough in the production of the so-called glassy metals, what was the best choice several years ago may no longer be so. Over the years, considerable efforts and great progress have been made in the field of materials selection, in particular through the improvement of the specific properties of different sorts of alloys. These growing developments, inter alia, include processes for enhancing their metallurgical, mechanical, physical, chemical, and especially their tribocorrosion properties. Alternatives in the composition have also been formulated to improve the workability (e.g., glass-forming ability) of many metallic glass alloys through, commonly, monitoring the quenching rate. Critical cooling rate and maximum attainable size, known as critical casting thickness, are both direct indicators of glass-forming ability (GFA). The smaller the critical cooling rate and/or the larger maximum attainable size, the higher is the GFA.

In order to conduct a meaningful evaluation of a design alloy, all essential data required to fit with the most appropriate material must be disposable. It is the purpose of this chapter to supply as much of this information as possible for commercially available metallic glass materials, and for use in systems where mechanical and chemical surface interactions take place and leading to deterioration effects. The main strategies known to meet these requirements are outlined. Since mechanical wear and corrosion are broad fields, where the interplay between several mechanisms can occur, different approaches to prevent them have been contracted. Some of the most common ways are discussed. Examples from different classes of metallic glass material are given.
