S.M.A. Al-Qawabah, Nabeel Alshabatat, U.F.

Al-Qawabeha / International Journal of Engineering

Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com
Vol. 2, Issue 3, May-Jun 2012, pp.1550-1553

Effect of Annealing Temperature on the Microstructure,

Microhardness, Mechanical Behavior and Impact Toughness of
Low Carbon Steel Grade 45
S.M.A. Al-Qawabah*, Nabeel Alshabatat*, U.F. Al-Qawabeha*
*(Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tafila Technical University, Jordan
P.O.Box 13720, Amman 11942)

ABSTRACT
Due to the high usage of low carbon steel in Annealing is heat treatment of steel by heating the steel
multiplications, previous work was focused toward to a temperature above hypoeutectoid SLT (Upper
its mechanical characteristics, this work rely on Critical Temperature). Steel is heated to approximately
studying the effect of multi-régimes of annealing 100F on the SLT program. Then cooled in the furnace
temperatures namely; 820,860, 900, and 940 ˚C on very slowly to room temperature. Formation of
the impact toughness, microstructure, austenite to destroy all existing structures prior to
microhardness and mechanical characteristics. A set heating. Slow cooling produces original phases of
of test specimens for impact, compression test, and ferrite and pearlite Hypereutectoid steel consists of
microstructure test were prepared using CNC pearlite and cementite. Cementite is fragile tissue
machine. It was found that the impact energy is around the pearlite. To improve the machinability of
increased as the annealing temperature increase; the steel annealing hypereutectoid spheroidize applied.
maximum is 22.5 % that achieved at 820˚C. it was This process will produce a round shape or a ball of
found that the microhardness decrease as the carbide in the ferritic matrix which makes the machine
annealing temperature increase except at 940 ˚C it easy. At the high temperature will break perlitik
return back to increase, the maximum decrease was structure and cementite network, this structure is called
31.6 % that achieved at 900 ˚C. spheroidite. This structure is desirable for the violence
acquired a minimum, with maximum ductility and
Keywords : impact energy, microhardness, steel C45, maximum machinability. Low carbon steel
toughness. spheroidized rare for machines, because they are too
soft and sticky in spheoridized conditions. Cutting
1. Introduction tools will tend to push the material rather than cut,
Low carbon steel has carbon content of 0.45%. Low causing excessive heat and wear on the cutting edge.
carbon steel is the most common form of steel as it’s Stress-Relief Annealing sometimes called subcritical
provides material properties that are acceptable for annealing, useful to eliminate residual stress due to
many applications. It is neither externally brittle nor heavy machining or cold-employment benefits. This is
ductile due to its lower carbon content. It has lower usually done at temperatures below the LCT, which is
tensile strength and malleable. Steel with low carbon usually chosen around 1000F. Benefits annealing are
steel has properties similar to iron. As the carbon Improve the ductility, Remove residual stresses that
content increases, the metal becomes harder and result from cold-working or machine and Improve
stronger but less ductile and more difficult to weld. The machinability. And several test we don on this project
process heat treatment is carried out first by heating the which are impact test, microstructure test and
metal and then cooling it in water, oil and brine water. hardening test. In literature it is possible to find many
The purpose of heat treatment is to soften the metal, to works regarding the quenching heat treatment with
change the grain size, to modify the structure of the very encouraging results [1–3]. Current processes
material and relive the stress set up in the material. The leading to carbide spheroidisation rely on diffusion of
various heat treatment processes are annealing, carbon in a workpiece heated to a temperature close to
normalizing, hardening, tempering, and surface or slightly below Ac1 [4]. During annealing, softening
hardening. Annealing to improve ductility and processes are under way in the microstructure and, in
toughness, to reduce hardness and to remove Carbides. some cases, recovery and recrystallization take place as
well. Naturally, the morphology of carbides changes as
well [5].

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S.M.A. Al-Qawabah, Nabeel Alshabatat, U.F. Al-Qawabeha / International Journal of Engineering
Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com
Vol. 2, Issue 3, May-Jun 2012, pp.1550-1553
The purpose of impact testing is to measure an object's Table 1. Temperatures and holding times for annealing
ability to resist high-rate loading. It is usually thought process.
of in terms of two objects striking each other at high
relative speeds. A part or material's ability to resist Carbon steel C45 Annealing Holding time
impact often is one of the determining factors in the Temperature (min)
service life of a part, or in the suitability of a (˚C)
designated material for a particular application. Impact A 820 27
resistance can be one of the most difficult properties to B 860 30
quantify. The ability to quantify this property is a great C 900 33
advantage in product liability and safety. The Charpy D 940 36
tests are conducted on instrumented machines capable
of measuring less than 1ft.lb. To 300ft. lbs. at The annealing regimes are shown in Fig. 1.
temperatures ranging from 320° F to over 2000°F.
Specimen types include notch configurations such as
V-Notch, U-Notch, Key-Hole Notch, as well as Un-
notched and ISO (DIN) V-Notch, with capabilities of
testing subsize specimens down to 1/4 size. IZOD
testing can be done up to 240ft.lbs. On standard single
notch and type-X3 specimens [5].

Hardness tests are limited in practical use and do not

provide accurate numeric data or scales particularly for
modern day metals and materials. The usual method to
achieve a hardness value is to measure the depth or area
of an indentation left by an indenter of a specific shape,
with a specific force applied for a specific time. There
are three principal standard test methods for expressing
the relationship between hardness and the size of the
impression, these being Brinell, Vickers, and Rockwell.
For practical and calibration reasons, each of these
methods is divided into a range of scales, defined by a Fig.1: Annealing regimes of low carbon steel grade 45
combination of applied load and indenter geometry [5].
2.2.2 Charpy impact test
The main objectives of this study are to investigate the Impact tests are designed to measure the resistance to
effect of different annealing temperatures on the impact failure of a material to a suddenly applied force. The test
toughness, microhardness and mechanical behavior of measures the impact energy, or the energy absorbed prior
low carbon steel grade 45. to fracture. Charpy bar test pieces (10*10*55 mm3)
were machined using CNC machine. Three specimens of
2. Material and Procedures each regime were tested to ensure the repeatability from
2.1 Material which the average is calculated.
In this study a set of low carbon steel C45 specimens
have been used, the density is 7.85 gm/cm3, where the 2.2.3 Compression test
chemical composition is ( 0.42 C, 0.24Si, 0.69 Mn, Compression test determining the behavior of
0.019P, 0.016Cr, 0.12Ni, 0.16Cu, 0.12Mo, 0.02Ti, materials under crushing loads. Specimens of 10 mm in
0.002V, 0.004W). diameter and 10mm height (H/D =1) are compressed,
and deformation at various loads is recorded where the
2.2 Experimental Procedures
procedure of compression test was performed in the
2.2.1 Annealing process
following steps:
Annealing is a heat treatment process by which the
1- Centered the specimens on a table of compression
material characteristics changes such as hardness and
device.
strength of the material, where the annealing conditions
2- Move the punch downward to the specimen where
are shown in Table 1.
uniaxial compressive load is applied using Qusar of 100
KN capacity.
3- Starting the compressed of specimen using strain rate
of 3.96*10-1/s .
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S.M.A. Al-Qawabah, Nabeel Alshabatat, U.F. Al-Qawabeha / International Journal of Engineering
Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com
Vol. 2, Issue 3, May-Jun 2012, pp.1550-1553
4- Load-Deflection curves were obtained from the true
stress- true strain was investigated. 250
212
2.2.4 Microstructure 193
192
A specimen of each regime was prepared for the 200

Microhardness Hv
166
microstructure test using microscope type (Nikon 208)
145
at 200x manufacturing using (98% alcohol ethanol +2% 150
nitric acid) as etching solution.
2.2.5 Hardening test 100
A digital microhardness tester model HWDM-3 is
used to investigate the hardness of low carbon steel 50
specimens at 300 gmf load; five readings were taken
from which the average was determined.
0
3. Result and Discussion
3.1 Effect of annealing temperature on the O-Before A-820ْ C B-860ْ C C-900ْ C D-940ْ C
microstructure of low carbon steel C45 Annealing Temperature C
It can be seen from Fig.2 that the grain size becomes
larger as the annealing temperature increase this due to Fig.3: Effect of annealing temperature on the
lower cooling rate. This will resulted in changing the microhardness of low carbon steel C45.
mechanical characteristics of low carbon steel grade
C45 according to hall-pitch equation. 3.3 Effect of upsetting process on the microhardness of
low carbon steel C45
It obviously clear from Fig.4 that the microhardness
affected by the plastic deformation, the microhardness
increased after upsetting process the maximum is 75 %
that attained after 860 ˚C annealed temperature.

350 Before Upsetting

290 After Upsetting
300 274
Microhardness Hv

239
250
212 212 206
192 193
200 166
145
150

100

50

0
O-Before A-820ْ C B-860ْ C C-900ْ C D-940ْ C
Annealing Temperature C
Fig.2: Photomicroscan of carbon steel C45 before and
after annealing at 200x.
Fig.4: Effect of upsetting process on the microhardness
3.2 Effect of annealing temperature on the of low carbon steel C45 and its regimes.
microhardness of low carbon steel C45
3.4 Effect of annealing temperature on the mechanical
From the histogram of Fig. 3 it can be seen that the behavior of low carbon steel C45
microhardness decrease as the annealing temperature
increase except at 940 ˚C it return back to increase, the It can be seen from Fig.5 that as the annealing
maximum decrease was 31.6 % that achieved at 900 ˚C. temperature increase to 900 ˚C the mechanical behavior
This can be attributed to the coarse grains as shown in decrease, but at 940 ˚C the mechanical characteristics
Fig.2. enhanced, this finding is consistent with the
microhardness results.

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 S.M.A. Al-Qawabah, Nabeel Alshabatat, U.F. Al-Qawabeha / International Journal of Engineering
Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com
Vol. 2, Issue 3, May-Jun 2012, pp.1550-1553

800 4. Conclusions
A-820 The following points can be concluded:
700
B-860

600
C-900 1- The impact toughness in general increase as
D-940 the annealing temperature increase, the
maximum is 22.5 % that achieved at 820˚C.
True stress MPa

500 O-Before

400
2- Microhardness is increased after upsetting
300
process the maximum is 75 % that attained at
860 ˚C.
200
3- The microhardness decrease as the annealing
100
temperature increases except at 940 ˚C it
0
returns back to increase, the maximum
decrease was 31.6 % that achieved at 900 ˚C.
02

05

13

19

29

41

53

66
8
08
0.

0.

0.

0.

0.

0.

0.

0.
0.

True strain mm/mm

4- The grain size becomes larger as the annealing
Fig.5: Effect of annealing temperature on the temperature increase.
mechanical behavior of low carbon steel C45.
5. Acknowledgment
3.4 Effect of annealing temperature on the impact This work has been supported by Tafila Technical
energy of low carbon steel C45 University which is acknowledged. The efforts of the
technical staff at mechanical engineering laboratories
It can be seen from the histogram of Fig. 6 that the and workshops are highly appreciated.
impact toughness in general increase as the annealing References
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