lec 4 heat treatment

Heat Treatment of Steels
Heat Treating – defined as the controlled heating and cooling of metals for the
primary purpose of altering their properties (strength, ductility, hardness,
toughness, machinability, etc)
Can be done for Strengthening Purposes (converting structure to martensite)
Can be done for Softening and Conditioning Purposes (annealing, tempering,
etc.)
First, a basic review of metallurgy!

How to Strengthen Metals:
• Key: prevent dislocations from moving through crystal
structure!!!
• Finer grain boundaries – can be done by recrystallizing
(and cold working)
• Increase dislocation density via COLD WORKING (strain
hardening)
• Add alloying elements to give –SOLID SOLUTION
HARDENING.
• Add alloying elements to give precipitates or dispersed
particles – PRECIPITATION HARDENING (aka Heat
Treat)
• DISPERSION HARDENING– fine particles (carbon)
impede dislocation movement.
– Referred to as Quench Hardening, Austenitizing and Quench or
simply “Heat Treat”.
– Generally 3 steps: heat to austenite T, rapid quench, then
temper.
Several cells form a crystal, if many crystals are growing in a
melt at the same time, where they meet = grain boundry as
shown below:
Mat’l
constants
ky
 y =o +
d
Average
grain
diameter
Called Hall-Petch
equation
The Effect of Grain Boundries:
• Dislocations pile up at GB and can’t go
further – this effectively strengthens the
crystal!
Work Hardening
Work hardening, or strain hardening,
results in an increase in the strength of a
material due to plastic deformation.
Plastic deformation = adding dislocations –

as dislocation density increases, they tend
to “tie up” and don’t move.
Ludwik’s Equation:
Strain hardening index

Hot finishing
benefit
Cold finishing
benefits
Solution Hardening ( Alloying):
= strengthening by deliberate
additions of impurities (alloying
elements) which act as barriers
to dislocation movement.
Example: addition of zinc to
copper making the alloy brass
(copper dissolves up to 30%
zinc). Zinc atoms replace
copper atoms to form random
substitutional solid solution.
The zinc atoms are bigger than
copper and by squeezing into
the copper lattice, they distort it
making it harder for dislocations
to move.
This is dispersion and
precipitate strengthening
This is solution hardening

(alloying)
Strengthening mechanisms and the consequent drop in ductility, here shown for copper alloys.
The mechanisms are frequently combined. The greater the strength,
the lower the ductility (the elongation to fracture, εf).
• HEAT TREATMENT OF STEELS:
▪ Ranges of temperature where Annealing, Normalizing and Spheroidization treatment are
carried out for hypo- and hyper-eutectoid steels.
▪ Details are in the coming slides.
910C Acm
A3
723C Full Annealing

A1
Spheroidization Stress Relief Annealing


T Recrystallization Annealing
Wt% C
0.8 %
Steel Crystal Structures:
•Ferrite – BCC iron w/
carbon in solid solution
(soft, ductile,
magnetic)
•Austenite – FCC iron
with carbon in solid
solution (soft,
moderate strength,
non-magnetic)
•Cementite –
Compound of carbon
and iron FE3C (Hard
and brittle)
•Pearlite – alternate
layers of ferrite and
cementite.
•Martensite – iron –
carbon w/ body
centered tetragonal –
result of heat treat and
HT: ferrite then austentite then martensite
quench
Heat Treatment of Steels
• Steel = 0.06% to 1.0% carbon
• Must have a carbon content of at least 0.6% (ideally) to
heat treat.
• Must heat to austenitic temperature range.
• Must rapidly quench to prevent the formation of
equilibrium products.
• Basically, crystal structure changes from BCC to FCC at
High Temp.
• The FCC can hold more carbon in solution and on rapid
cooling the crystal structure wants to return to its BCC
structure. It cannot be due to trapped carbon atoms.
The net result is a distorted crystal structure called body-
centered tetragonal called martensite.
An overview of important heat treatments
❑ A broad classification of heat treatments possible are given below. Many more specialized
treatments or combinations of these are possible.
HEAT TREATMENT
BULK SURFACE
ANNEALING NORMALIZING HARDENING

THERMAL THERMO-
& CHEMICAL
TEMPERING
Full Annealing Carburizing
MARTEMPERING Flame
Recrystallization Annealing Induction Nitriding
Stress Relief Annealing AUSTEMPERING LASER Carbo-nitriding
Spheroidization Annealing Electron Beam

10.4 Direct Hardening –
Austenitizing and quench:
• Austenitizing – again taking a steel with
0.6% carbon or greater and heating to the
austenite region.
• Rapid quench to trap the carbon in the
crystal structure – called martensite (BCT)
• Quench requirements determined from
isothermal transformation diagram (IT
diagram).
• Get “Through” Hardness!!!
Austenitizing:
Heat to austenite range.

Want to be close to
transformation
temperature to get fine
grain structure.
For this particular steel want to cool from about 1400 F to <400 F in about 1
second!
Quenching:
• Depending on how fast steel must be quenched
(from IT diagram), the heat treater will determine
type of quenching required:
– Water (most severe)
– Oil
– Molten Salt
– Gas/ Air (least severe)
– Many phases in between!!! Ex: add water/polymer to
water reduces quench time! Adding 10% sodium
hydroxide or salt will have twice the cooling rate!
10.4 Direct Hardening - Selective
Hardening :
• Same requirements as austenitizing:
– Must have sufficient carbon levels (>0.4%)
– Heat to austenite region and quench
• Why do?
– When only desire a select region to be hardened:
Knives, gears, etc.
– Object to big to heat in furnace! Large casting w/
wear surface
• Types:
– Flame hardening, induction hardening, laser beam
hardening
Flame Hardening:
Induction Hardening
Diffusion Hardening
• Why do?
– Carbon content to low to through harden with
previous processes.
– Desire hardness only in select area
– More controlled versus flame hardening and induction
hardening.
– Can get VERY hard local areas (i.e. HRC of 60 or
greater)
– Interstitial diffusion when tiny solute atoms diffuce into
spaces of host atoms
– Substitiutional diffusion when diffusion atoms to big to
occupy interstitial sites – then must occupy vacancies
Diffusion Hardening:
• Requirements:
– High temp
– Host metal must have low concentration of
the diffusing species
– Must be atomic suitability between diffusing
species and host metal
Diffusion Hardening:
• Most Common Types:
– Carburizing
– Nitriding
– Carbonitriding
Diffusion Hardening - Carburizing:
• Pack carburizing most common:
– Part surrounded by charcoal treated with
activating chemical – then heated to austenite
temperature.
– Charcoal forms CO2 gas which reacts with
excess carbon in charcoal to form CO.
– CO reacts with low-carbon steel surface to
form atomic carbon
– The atomic carbon diffuses into the surface
– Must then be quenched to get hardness!
Diffusion Hardening - Nitriding:
• Nitrogen diffused into surface being
treated. Nitrogen reacts with steel to form
very hard iron and alloy nitrogen
compounds.
• Process does not require quenching – big
advantage.
• The case can include a white layer which
can be brittle – disadvantage
• More expensive than carburizing
Source of nitrogen
Reduction process: 2NH3 2N + 3H2

10.6 Softening and Conditioning -
• Recrystallization
• Annealing
– Process anneal
– Stress relief anneal
– Normalizing
• Tempering
Recrystallization
• Done often with cold working processes
• Limit to how much steel can be cold
worked before it becomes too brittle.
• This process heats steel up so grains
return to their original size prior to
subsequent cold working processes.
• Also done to refine coarse grains
Annealing
• Annealing – primary purpose is to soften
the steel and prepare it for additional
processing such as cold forming or
machining.
• If already cold worked - allows
recrystallization.
Annealing
• What does it do?
1. Reduce hardness
2. Remove residual stress (stress relief)
3. Improve toughness
4. Restore ductility
5. Refine grain size
Annealing
• Process Steps:
1. Heat material into the asutenite region (i.e.
above 1600F) – rule of thumb: hold steel for
one hour for each one inch of thickness
2. Slowly furnace cool the steel – DO NOT
QUENCH
3. Key slow cooling allows the C to precipitate
out so resulting structure is coarse pearlite
with excess ferrite
4. After annealing steel is quite soft and ductile
Annealing versus Austenitizing:
• End result: One softens and the other hardens!
• Both involve heating steel to austenite region.
• Only difference is cooling time:
– If fast (quenched) C is looked into the structure =
martensite (BCT) = HARD
– If slow C precipates out leading to coarse pearlite
(with excess cementite of ferrite) = SOFT
10.6 Softening and Conditioning –
Other forms of Annealing
• Normalizing – use when max softness
not required and cost savings desired
(faster than anneal). Air cooled vs.
furnace cooled.
• Process Anneal – not heated as high as
full anneal.
• Stress Relief Anneal – lower temp
(1,000F), slow cooled. Large castings,
weldments
Temper
• Almost always done following heat treat
as part of the austenitizing process!
• Because of lack of adequate toughness
and ductility after heat treat, high carbon
martensite is not a useful material
despite its great strength (too brittle).
• Tempering imparts a desired amount of
toughness and ductility (at the expense
of strength)

lec 4 heat treatment

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

lec 4 heat treatment

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

lec 4 heat treatment

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Heat Treatment of Steels

First, a basic review of metallurgy!

Plastic deformation = adding dislocations –

Strain hardening index

This is solution hardening

723C Full Annealing

Spheroidization Stress Relief Annealing

ANNEALING NORMALIZING HARDENING

Stress Relief Annealing AUSTEMPERING LASER Carbo-nitriding

Spheroidization Annealing Electron Beam

Heat to austenite range.

Reduction process: 2NH3 2N + 3H2

You might also like