1. A method to identify an unknown metal alloy comprises: a. determining a chemical composition of the metal alloy; b. determining key elements and trap elements based on information retrieved from a database; c. comparing a relative amount of each key element present with threshold values of said key element retrieved from a dataset of a specific known metal alloy; d. determining a similarity factor between the relative amount of each key element and the threshold value of said key elements; e. forming a correlation factor based on the similarity factors; and f. providing a result list of metal alloys retrieved from the database having highest correlation factors.