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    Heat Treatment of Metals

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    Dawood Abdullah
    Process in which a metal's internal structure and properties are altered by heating and controlled cooling. Key heat treatment processes include softening through annealing, normalizing, and tempering, as well as hardening through quenching and case hardening. The amount of carbon and specific heat treatment method determines the resulting properties like hardness, strength, and ductility.

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    Heat Treatment of Metals

    Uploaded by

    Dawood Abdullah
    8 views14 pages
    Process in which a metal's internal structure and properties are altered by heating and controlled cooling. Key heat treatment processes include softening through annealing, normalizing, and tempering, as well as hardening through quenching and case hardening. The amount of carbon and specific heat treatment method determines the resulting properties like hardness, strength, and ductility.

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    3. Heat Treatment of Metals

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    Process in which a metal's internal structure and properties are altered by heating and controlled cooling. Key heat treatment processes include softening through annealing, normalizing, and tempering, as well as hardening through quenching and case hardening. The amount of carbon and specific heat treatment method determines the resulting properties like hardness, strength, and ductility.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as pdf or txt
    8 views14 pages

    Heat Treatment of Metals

    Uploaded by

    Dawood Abdullah
    Process in which a metal's internal structure and properties are altered by heating and controlled cooling. Key heat treatment processes include softening through annealing, normalizing, and tempering, as well as hardening through quenching and case hardening. The amount of carbon and specific heat treatment method determines the resulting properties like hardness, strength, and ductility.

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    Definition and purpose

    Process in which a metal is heated to a certain


    temperature and then cooled in a particular
    manner to alter its internal structure for
    obtaining desired degree of physical and
    mechanical properties such as brittleness,
    hardness, and softness.
    The amount of carbon present in plain carbon
    steel has a pronounced effect on the properties
    of a steel and on the selection of suitable heat
    treatments to attain certain desired properties.
    Below are some major types of heat treatment
    processes:
    The types of Heat Treatment:

    1. Softening

    2. Hardening
    Softening processes:

    • Annealing
    • Normalizing
    • Tempering
    are the some of principal ways by which metals
    are softened .
    Annealing
    Steel is annealed to reduce the hardness, improve
    machine ability, facilitate cold-working, produce a
    desired microstructure. Full annealing is the process
    of softening steel by a heating and cooling cycle, so
    that it may be bent or cut easily. In annealing, steel
    is heated above the transformation temperature to
    form austenite, and cooled very slowly, usually in
    the furnace.
    Annealing

    There are several types of annealing like blue


    annealing, box annealing, recrystallisation
    annealing, soft annealing and spheroidizing. These
    are practiced according to their different final
    product properties in the industry.
    • Recrystallization is a process by which deformed grains are
    replaced by a new set of undeformed grains
    that nucleate and grow until the original grains have been
    entirely consumed. Recrystallization is usually accompanied
    by a reduction in the strength and hardness of a material
    and a simultaneous increase in the ductility. Thus, the
    process may be introduced as a deliberate step in metals
    processing or may be an undesirable by product of another
    processing step. The most important industrial uses are the
    softening of metals previously hardened by cold work,
    which have lost their ductility, and the control of the grain
    structure in the final product.
    • Spheroidizing is a form of heat treatment for
    iron-based alloys, commonly carbon steels, in
    order to convert them into ductile and
    machinable alloys. It is conducted at
    temperatures that are slightly below the
    eutectoid temperature (temperature at which
    the solution is a solid solution rather than
    liquid), followed by a slow cooling process.
    Normalizing
    • It is a type of heat treatment applicable to
    ferrous metals only.
    • It differs from annealing in that the metal is
    heated to a higher temperature and then
    removed from the furnace for air cooling.
    • The purpose of normalizing is to remove the
    internal stresses induced by heat treating,
    welding, casting, forging, forming, or
    machining.
    Tempering
    Tempering, consists of reheating a quenched steel
    to a suitable temperature below the transformation
    temperature for an appropriate time and cooling
    back to room temperature. Freshly quenched
    martensite is hard but not ductile. Tempering is
    needed to impart ductility to martensite usually at a
    small sacrifice in strength.
    Tempering
    The effect of tempering may be illustrated as
    follows. If the head of a hammer were quenched to a
    fully martensitic structure, it probably would crack
    after the first few blows. Tempering during
    manufacture of the hammer imparts shock resistance
    with only a slight decrease in hardness. Tempering is
    accomplished by heating a quenched part to some
    point below the transformation temperature, and
    holding it at this temperature for an hour or more,
    depending on its size.
    Tempering
    The micro structural changes accompanying
    tempering include loss of acicular martensite
    pattern and the precipitation of tiny carbide
    particles. This micro structural is referred to as
    tempered martensite.
    Hardening processes
    • Quenching
    • Case hardening
    1. Induction hardening
    2. Carburizing
    3. Nitriding
    Hardening
    Hardening is carried out by quenching a steel, that is
    cooling it rapidly from a temperature above the
    transformation temperature. Steel is quenched in water
    or brine for the most rapid cooling, in oil for some
    alloy steels, and in air for certain higher alloy steels.
    With this fast cooling rate, the transformation from
    austenite to pearlite cannot occur and the new phase
    obtained by quenching is called martensite. Martensite
    is a supersaturated metastable phase and have body
    centered tetragonal lattice (bct) instead of bcc. After
    steel is quenched, it is usually very hard and strong but
    brittle. Martensite looks needle-like under microscope
    due to its fine lamellar structure.

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