HEAT TREATMENT

Heat Treatment

Heat Treatment is the controlled heating

and cooling of metals to alter their physical
and mechanical properties without changing
the product shape.

Heat treatment is sometimes done inadvertently

due to manufacturing processes that either
heat or cool the metal such as welding or
forming.

Heat treatment should be fully integrated with other

manufacturing processes if effective results are to be obtained.
• HEAT TREATMENT
• Heat treatment may be defined as an operation or
combination of operations involving the heating of metals or
alloys in the solid state to definite temperatures, followed by
cooling at a suitable rates to obtain desired physical and
mechanical properties. The physical and mechanical
properties depend on the size, shape and form of the micro
constituent present.
• The cooling of material after it is being undergone heat
treatment is called as QUENCHING. Quenching may be done
at different rates depending on the desired properties of
material.
• The medium in which material is cooled is known as
Quenching media. Quenching media may be water, brine or
still air.
 Why to Heat Treat?
• Heat Treatment is often associated with increasing
the strength of material, but it can also be used to
alter certain manufacturability objectives such as
improve machining, improve formability, restore
ductility after a cold working operation.

• Thus it is a very enabling manufacturing process that

can not only help other manufacturing process, but
can also improve product performance by increasing
strength or other desirable characteristics.
Factors to consider before heat treatment
:-
There are certain factors which are to be
considered before heat treating a material.
1. Chemical composition of a material.
2. Mode of manufacture of a material i.e cast,
forged etc.
3. Whether any previous heat treatment has
been carried out and what is its structure.
4. Heat treatment operations to be performed
and properties and structural requirements
desired.
Objects of Heat Treatment :-
When steel is subjected to the heat
treatment operations, it undergoes many
structural changes due to which the
properties of materials change. The
following points need consideration.
1. Structural considerations of the object
before heat treatment.
2. Structural changes occurring during the
heat treatment
3. Structural conditions permanently retained.
The following are the Main Objectives of Heat
Treatment.
• To soften the material that has been
hardened by previous heat treatment or
mechanical working.
• To harden the steel and increase its strength.
• To adjust its other mechanical and physical
properties like ductility, malleability,
permeability corrosion resistance etc.
• To stabilize the dimensions of the steel
instruments so that they do not expand or
contract with time.
• To refine the grain size of the steel.
• To reduce and eliminate the internal stresses.
• To produce special micro structures e.g. to
spheroidize in a tool steel for improved
machinability or to completely retain
austenite structure in stainless steel.
• To eliminate gases.
• To alter the composition of surface layers on
a ductile interior.
• To improve electrical and mechanical
properties.
 The Principles of Heat Treatment
• Heat treatment consists of Heating-Up and Cooling-Down
process.
• Heating up the steel will change the microstructure to Austenite.
• Cooling down the steel at different cooling rates will change the
microstructure from Austenite to different structures
correspondingly.
• Change in Microstructures result in change in mechanical
properties.
• By heat treatment, we can change the mechanical properties of
moulds and machine components to our desired state.
• For example, to harden the mould will increase strength and wear
resistance resulting in longer mould life.
• To anneal a hard steel bar will soften it to a state good for
machining.
• To normalize a steel bar will toughen it to a state good for
impact.
Change in Micro-structure
• If a steel bar is heated, it is found that at a specific
temperature, which differs with each class of steel,
important structural alterations begin to take place in it.
This specific temperature marking the beginning of the
structural change is known as the 'lower critical
temperature'. This change concern the composition of
the steel, that is soft ferrite iron and a hard, brittle
substance called Cementite (Fe3C).

• The lower critical temperature is the point at which

ferrite begins to transform to another structure called
'austenite' and iron carbide starts to dissolve in the
'austenite'.
General types of Heat Treatment:-
• It accounts for more
than 80% of all
metals. The various
processes may be
broadly classified as:
HEAT TREATMENTS USED TO INCREASE STRENGTH

• Solid-solution strengthening
The greater the size difference of solute atoms, the more
effective the addition.
• Strain hardening
• Grain size refinement
• Precipitation hardening
Strength is obtained from a nonequilibrium structure that is
produced by a three- step heat treatment
• Dispersion hardening.

• Phase transformations

Notes + Degarmo
Heat Treatment

Hardening

Softening

Thermo Chemical
Process
Hardening
Hardening

Tempering
 Softening

Annealing

Normalizing
 Thermo chemical
process
Or may be called as
Case Hardening
Hardening :-
• This process is intended to produce through
hardened structure by quench-hardening.
This is the most common heat treatment
practice for most of mould making industries.

• Hardening increases wear resistance and

strength of material and provides toughness
after Tempering, so it is widely used for
increasing the life of moulds as well as
mechanical parts of machinery.
• Hardening:-
• The work piece is heated slowly, to obtain the finest grain-sizes,
to its hardening temperature - much higher than annealing
temperatures. The metal is kept at this temperature only until
uniform heat distribution and completion of the thermal
transformation. Once the metal has been uniformly heated to
temperature, it is removed from the furnace and placed directly
into a quenching tank. This rapidly cools the metal and the
metal retains its new qualities.

• There is a range of quenching media of varying severity, water

or brine being the most severe, through oil and synthetic
products to air which is the least severe.
• Tempering:-
• After quenching the steel is hard, brittle and
internally stressed. Before use, it is usually necessary
to reduce these stresses and increase toughness by
'tempering'. There will also be a reduction in
hardness and the selection of tempering temperature
dictates the final properties
• Tempering is always done below lower critical range.
The operation consists of heating the hardened steel
to a range of temperature which extends from room
temperature to below lower critical range
temperatures.
Tempering temperatures
Tool or Temperature Temper
Article ºC Colour
Turning tools 230 Pale straw
Drills and 240 Dark straw
milling
cutters
Taps and 250 Brown
shear blades
Punches, 260 Brownish
reamers purple
Cold chisels 280 Dark purple
The Softening Processes
• Softening is done to reduce strength or hardness,
remove residual stresses, improve toughness, restore
ductility, refine grain size or change the
electromagnetic properties of the steel. As softening
process increases the toughness of the material so it
may also be called as Toughening Process.

• This process is intended to produce a structure

possesses good strength and ductility in steels by
means of Normalizing. Improved machinability, grain
structure refinement, homogenization and
modification of residual stresses are among the
reasons for which normalizing is done.
• Annealing :-
• Used variously to soften, relieve internal stresses,
improve machinability and to develop particular
mechanical and physical properties.In special silicon
steels used for transformer laminations annealing
develops the particular microstructure that confers
the unique electrical properties

• The operation consists of heating the steel to certain

predetermined temperature, soaking at a constant
temperature for a sufficient time to allow the
necessary changes to occur and then cooling at a
very slow rate.
• Annealing is the heating and then cooling of metal to
make the metal less brittle, or more malleable and
ductile.

• This will soften the steel that was previously

hardened and reduce internal stresses. Annealing is
done by heating the metal to a temperature beyond
the critical temperature and holding it there for a
period of time. The metal is then cooled with the
furnace and not removed until the furnace is cold.
• Normalising:-

• Heating the forged part just beyond the critical

temperature and then allowing it to air-cool
completes normalizing.

• This allows the grain-size to be refined and, if not

held at that temperature too long, will result in a
newly formed crystalline structure. The internal
stresses, if any, will be relieved, hardened steels will
be softened, overheated steels will have a more
favorable, normal fine-grained structure, and
structural distortion will be removed.
• This requires heating to above the
critical range temperature, holding for
sufficient time to allow temperature
equalization followed by air cooling. It is
therefore similar to annealing but with a
faster cooling rate.
For higher carbon contents, such as the 0.4 to 0.6% range,
different cooling rates can produce wider property variations, and
the uniform furnace cooling of a full anneal is often preferred
Precipitation Hardening
If a higher strength is required, a lower temperature and longer time could
be selected.
Ausforming- TMT
JOMINY TEST FOR HARDENABILITY
It should be noted that not all steels will respond to all heat treatment processes,
Table 1 summaries the response, or otherwise, to the different processes.
Thermo-chemical Processes (Case
Hardening):-
• These involve the diffusion, to pre-
determined depths into the steel surface, of
carbon, nitrogen and, less commonly, boron.
These elements may be added individually or
in combination and the result is a surface
with desirable properties and of radically
different composition to the bulk.
• This process is employed to produce a 'case'
or surface layer substantially harder than the
interior or core of the work piece. They
include carburizing, nitriding and induction
hardening
Following tables will make the point clear about thermo chemical
processes
Table 2
 Questions:-
•?