Heat Treatment Process
Heat Treatment Process
Heat Treatment Process
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Heat Treatment
An nea ling :
➢ Annealing
The various purpose of these heat treatments is to:
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Heat Treatment
➢Heat treating is a group of industrial and metalworking processes used to alter
the physical, and sometimes chemical, properties of a material. The most common
application is metallurgical.
➢Heat treatment involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme
temperatures, to achieve a desired result such as hardening or softening of a
material.
Heat treatment techniques include:
➢Annealing,
➢Normalizing
➢Tempering, and
➢Hardening
➢Case hardening,
TTT DIAGRAMS
TTT diagrams, or Time-Temperature-
Transformation diagrams, are graphical
representations used in metallurgy to understand
the transformations that occur in a material as it is
heated and cooled.
The first region represents the austenitic phase, where the material is heated to
a temperature above its transformation temperature and transformed into an
austenitic structure.
Iron-carbon alloy
with Eutectoid
(0.8 % C)
composition.
❑ A: Austenite
❑ P: Pearlite
❑ B: Bainite
❑ M: Martensite
T emp er a tu r e Transformation ( T T T ) Diagram:
Example 1:
➢ Iron-carbon with
alloy eutectoid
composition.
➢ Specify the nature of the final
microstructure (% bainite,
martensite, pearlite etc) for the Bainite,
alloy that is subjected to the
100%
following time–temperature
treatments:
➢ Treatment (a)
➢ Rapidly cool to 350 ˚C
➢ Hold for 104 seconds
➢ Quench to room
T emp er a tu r e Transformation ( T T T ) Diagram:
Example 2:
➢ Iron-carbon with
alloy eutectoid
composition.
➢ Specify the nature of the final
microstructure (% bainite,
martensite, pearlite etc) for the
alloy that is subjected to the
following time–temperature
treatments:
Austenite,
➢ Alloy begins at 760˚C and has 100%
been held long enough
to achievea complete
and
homogeneous austenitic
structure.
➢ Treatment (c)
➢ Rapidly cool to 650˚C Final:
➢ Hold for 20 seconds 50% Bainite,
50% Pearlite
➢ Rapidly cool to 400˚C
➢ Hold for 103 seconds
➢
ANNEALING
The Steel parts produced by mechanical operation
process such as casting, rolling or drawing,
extruding, etc. develop internal stresses and change
their internal structure. This renders them hard and
brittle.
Annealing is carried out for such parts to remove the
internal stresses and make them more ductile and
less brittle.
Annealing consists of heating of steel parts to a
temperature at or near the critical temperature 900
degree Celsius hold it at that temperature for a
suitable time and when allowed to cool slowly in the
ANNEALING IS CARRIED OUT FOR
ACCOMPLISHING ONE OR MORE OF THE
FOLLOWING:
•Softening of a metal or alloy. This may be
done due to improving machinability.
•Relieving internal residual stresses caused by
the various manufacturing process.
•Refining the grain size of the metal or alloy.
•Increasing the ductility and reducing
brittleness.
Two types of annealing carried out are:
1. Process annealing.
2. Full annealing.
1. PROCESS ANNEALING:
It consists of heating the Steel to a temperature little below the critical range and then
cooling it slowly. This causes complete recrystallization in steel to form New grain
structure. This will release the internal stresses previously the strip in the steel and
improve the machinability.
2. FULL ANNEALING:
It consists of heating the Steel temperature at or near the critical point holding there for a
suitable time and then allowing it cools slowly in the Furnace itself. This courses wipes
out all traces of the previous structure and define the crystalline structure in addition to
the softening of the metal. It also removes internal stresses.
NORMALIZING:
Normalizing is a heat treatment process similar to annealing in which the Steel is
heated to about 50 degree Celsius above the upper critical temperature followed by air
cooling.
This heat treatment process is usually carried for low and medium carbon steel as well
as alloy steel to make the grain structure more uniform and relieve the internal
stresses.
The grain size is finer in normalized structure than in annealed structure.
Normalizing carried for accomplishing one or more
of the following:
To refine the grain size.
Reduce or remove internal stresses.
Improve the machinability of low carbon steel.
Increase the strength of medium carbon steel.
And also To improve the mechanical properties of
the medium Carbon Steel.
➢Steels are soft in annealed condition and
tend to stick during machining. By
normalizing, an optimum combination of
strength and softness is achieved, which
results in satisfactory level of
Machinability in steels.
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Differences Between Annealing And
Sl No
ANNEALING
Normalizing: NORMALIZING
1
Steel parts are gradually Steel parts are gradually cool in
cooled in a furnace. still air
2 Comparatively lower yield point, The comparatively higher yield point
Ultimate Tensile strength, and ultimate tensile strength and impact
impact strength. strength.
3 Comparatively soft and easily Comparatively less soft.
machinable.
4 Low hardness. BHN ranges Relatively more hard. Bhn ranges
from 125 to 220 BHN. from 140 to 245 BHN.
5 Highly ductile and percentage of The less ductile and relative
elongation is more. percentage of elongation is less
HARDENING
Hardening is a heat treatment process carried out to increase the hardness of
Steel.
It consists of heating Steel components to the temperature within or above its
critical range. Held at this temperature for a considerable time to ensure thorough
penetration of heat at this temperature well inside the component and then
allowed to cool separately by quenching in water oil or brine solution.
This kind of heat treatment produced a small grain size in the metal.
The strength and hardness of the Steel are increased but makes it more brittle
since ductility is reduced.
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Tempering:
This heat treatment process carried out for steel parts
which have been already hardened, in order to reduce
bitterness and unequal stress develop as a result of
hardening.
This process reduces brittleness and hardness but
improves the tensile strength of Steel.
It increases the toughness of Steel at the expenses of
loss of some hardness.
Almost all the cutting tools need a hard cutting edge
while at the same time they are required to be tough and
strong so as not to break when subjected to shock or
fatigue.
Tempering:
Sampling is done by reheating the hardened Steel to some
temperature below the lower critical temperature and
then quenching in oil or salt bath.
1)Low- temperature
tempering (150 – 250 oC),
2)Medium –
temperature tempering (350 –
450 oC),
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Heat Treatment
Quenching:
➢Quenching is a process of rapid cooling of materials from high
temperature to room temperature or even lower. In steels quenching
results in transformation of austenite to martensite (a non-equilibrium
constituent).
1) Vapor Blanket,
2) Nucleate Boiling,
3) Convection.
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Heat Treatment
Quenching:
➢Vapor Blanket (stage 1)
As soon as the work-piece comes into contact with a liquid coolant
(quenchant), the surrounding quenchant layer is instantaneously heated up
to the boiling point of the quenchant and gets vaporized due to the high
temperature of the work- piece.
➢This acts as an insulator, preventing
the quenching oil from contacting the
metal surface. As a consequence, the rate
of cooling during this stage is slow.
The third stage is called as the liquid cooling stage or the convection stage.
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Heat Treatment
Quenching: Effect of Q u en c h i n g M e d i u m
➢Quenching medium has the profound effect on the final phase of the
material. Quenching medium is directly related to the rate of the cooling
of the material.
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Heat Treatment
Quenching: Effect of Q u en c h i ng M e d i u m
(Water)
➢ Although quenched in oil the austensite converts into suitably fine pearlite.
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Heat Treatment
Q u e n c h i n g : Effect of Q u e n c h i n g M e d i u m
Coarse Pearlite
- Smaller T:
colonies are
larger
Fine Pearlite
- Larger T:
colonies ar e
smaller
➢The combination of the these properties can be achieved by the following methods:
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Heat Treatment
F l a m e Ha rden ing
➢The flame hardening involves heating the surface of a steel to a
temperature above upper critical point (850 oC) with a oxyacetylene flame
and then immediately quenched the surface with cold water.
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Heat Treatment
F l a m e Ha rden ing
➢The surface layers are hardened to about 50 – 60 HRC. It is less expensive
and can be easily adopted for large and complex shapes.
➢ The flame hardening methods are suitable for the steels with
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carbon
Heat Treatment
Induction Ha rde n in g
➢Induction hardening involves placing the steel components within a coil
through which high frequency current is passed. The current in the coil
induce eddy current in the surface layers, and heat the surface layers uotp
austenite state.
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Heat Treatment
Induction Ha rde nin g
➢Advantages of induction hardening over flame hardening is its speed
and ability to harden small parts; but it is expensive. Like flame
hardening, it is suitable for medium carbon and low alloy steels.
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Heat Treatment
Carburising
➢Carburising is carried out on a steels containing carbon less than 0.2%.
It involves increasing the carbon contents on the surface layers upto 0.7 to
0.8%.
➢In this process, the steel is heated in contact with carbonaceous material
from which it absorbs carbon. This method is mostly used for securing
hard and wear resistance surface with tough core carburising is used
for 2 CO C + CO 2
gears, cams, bearings and clutch plates.
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Heat Treatment
Carburising
➢ The Following methods are used to diffuse carbon into
surface layers:
1) Pack (solid) Carburising,
2) Gas Carburising,
3) Liquid Carburising.
Liquid Carburising
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Gas Carburising
Heat Treatment
Nitriding
➢Nitriding involves diffusion of nitrogen into the product to form nitrides.
The resulting nitride case can be harder than the carburized steel. This
process is used for alloy steels containing alloying elements (Aluminum,
Chromium and Molybdenum) which form stable nitrides.
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Heat Treatment
C ya n idin g
➢Similar to carbonitriding, cyaniding also involves the diffusion of carbon
and nitrogen into the surface of steel. It is also called liquid carbonitriding.
The components are heated to the temperature of about 800 – 900 oC in a
molten cyanide bath consisting of sodium cyanide, sodium carbonate and
sodium chloride.
➢After allowing the components in the bath for about 15 – 20 minutes, they
are quenched in oil or water. Cyaniding is normally used for low-carbon
steels, and case depths are usually less than 0.25 mm.
➢It produces hard and wear resistance surface on the steels. Because of
shorter time cycles, the process is widely used for the machine components
subjected to moderate wear and service loads.
➢ The process is particularly suitable for screws, small gears, nuts and bolts.
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