Heat Treatment 7

Heat-Treatment
• Heat treatment a combination of operations involving

heating and cooling of metals at a specific rate in the solid
state by changing a property or combination of properties,
such as mechanical, physical, magnetic, or electrical
leading to modification in the molecular arrangement
causing the metal to be produced either soft or hard.
• It involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to
extreme temperatures, to achieve a desired result such as
hardening or softening of a material
• It applies only to processes where the heating and cooling
are done for the specific purpose of altering properties
intentionally
Heat-Treatment Objective :
To achieve a desired degree of properties such as hardness

and softens. So, the metal would be more useful,
serviceable, and safe for definite purpose.
However, It is very important to note that the major general
reasons for heat treatments based on their types are
related to:
- Improve strength, ductility, toughness
- Obtain fine grain size
- Remove internal stresses
- Increase impact and wear resistance.
There are two types of heat treatment processes, the
softening and hardening
• Softening Purpose: includes annealing, normalizing,
tempering to reduce strength or hardness, Remove residual
stresses, Improve toughness, Restore ductility, or Refine grain
size.
• Hardening Purpose: includes quenching and case
hardening processes.
To Increase the strength and wear properties by
providing sufficient amount of carbon in the alloy content.
Note:
When an annealed part is allowed to cool in the furnace, it is called
a "full anneal" heat treatment.
When an annealed part is removed from the furnace and allowed
to cool in air, it is called a "normalizing" heat treatment.
Heat Treatment stages
The heat treatment for any metal involve three stages:
1-Heating rate:
• the slower heating lead to uniform temperature distributed
over the whole part. while the higher heating can lead to
uneven heating in one section of a part by expanding faster
than another section in the same part result in distortion
or cracking.
• The heating rate depends on heat conductivity of the
metal , e. g. a metal with a high-heat conductivity heats
faster than one with a low conductivity.
• shape , size and cross section for the part. Parts with large
cross sections require slower heating rates to remain close
to the surface temperature.
Heat Treatment stages
2-Soaking stage:
holding the metal at a given temperature , when the
desired internal structural changes take place for a given
time when the heat distributed uniformly thought the
metal. Holding time depends on chemical analysis of the
metal, mass of the part and cross sections’ shape, e.g. the
more complex cross section shape, the longer soaking
time .
3- Cooling rate: There are different cooling rates
depending on the medium, e.g. oil, water, brine, etc.
Selection the rate at which the metal is cooled depends
on the metal and the properties desired.
13.6 Softening and Conditioning -
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
 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 %
A- Softening Treatments (Annealing )
A- Annealing of Steel: heating the steel above its critical
temperature (recrystallization temperature) for enough
time, then cooling it to reduce hardness, remove residual
stress (stress relief), improve toughness, restore ductility,
or refine grain size.
Annealing Stages:
With increasing annealing temperature, the steel would be undergone
three stages of phase transformations:
1- Recovery: It occurs at the lower temperature stage of all

annealing process. The purpose to eliminate residual
stresses introduced during deformation without reducing
the strength of the cold worked material. The grain size
and shape do not change during this stage.
Annealing Stages:
2- Recrystallization: It occurs at a medium temperature
stage of annealing. It is designed to eliminate all of the
effects of the strain produced during cold working. New
strain free grains nucleate and grow to replace those
deformed by internal stresses.
3- Grain Growth: it occurs after completion re-
crystallization stage. The purpose is to reduce the amount
of grain boundary area by movement of grain boundaries
by diffusion. In this stage, the microstructure starts to
coarsen and may cause the steel material to lose a
substantial part of its original strength
Types of Steel’s Annealing
1- Process annealing :
(intermediate annealing, subcritical annealing
1- Process annealing is a heat treatment that is often used to soften and
increase the ductility of a previously strain hardened metal . Ductility is
important in shaping and creating a more refined piece of work through
processes such as rolling, drawing, forging, spinning and heating.
2- Heating the steel to a temperature below the lower critical
temperature. Then, soaking long enough to relieve stresses, followed
by furnace cooling.
3- Purpose: Improve ductility for cold worked steels which have low
ductility and high hardness.
4- The temperature range for process annealing ranges from 260 °C to
760 °C, depending on the alloy.
Types of Steel’s Annealing
2- Full Annealing
1- Annealing temperature which is 30 to 50˚C above its upper
critical temperature point in the furnace.
2- Soaking it at this temperature for sufficient period of time to allow
microstructure transformation in the material,
3- followed by cooling down inside the furnace to room temperature.
During that, austenizing is occurred with slow cooling ( several
hours) producing coarse pearlite ,which is relatively soft and ductile.
4- the purpose of the process is to soften parts that were already
hardened by plastic deformation, but need to undergo subsequent
machining/forming.
5- Example :in full annealing of hypoeutectoid steels less than 0.77%
is heated to 723 to 910 C° (above A3 line ) convert to single phase
austenite cooled slowly at room temperature .Resulting structure is
coarse pearlite with excess of ferrite it is quite soft and more ductile
Full annealing

Heat Treatment 7

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Heat-Treatment

• Heat treatment a combination of operations involving

To achieve a desired degree of properties such as hardness

723C Full Annealing

Spheroidization Stress Relief Annealing

1- Recovery: It occurs at the lower temperature stage of all

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