Some Issues on Heat treatment

1. Introduction The key to improve the material property is to change its structure at atomic level. This can be achieved through (i) alloying and controlled heat and cooling basically heat treatment

The basic steps of heat treatment are: Heat -> Soaking -> Cooling
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Some Issues on Heat treatment

Heat -> Soaking -> Cooling Temperature Time of soaking Rate of cooling Medium of cooling - Different combinations of the above parameters - Different compositions of materials and initial phases of materials Different heat treatments
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Some Issues on Heat treatment

2. Purpose of heat treatment
(1) Soften the metal prior to shaping; (2) Relieve the effects of strain hardening that occurs during cold forming; (3) Achieve the final strength and hardness required in the finished product as one of the end manufacturing processes.

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Some Issues on Heat treatment

Body heat treatment Heat treatment

Surface heat treatment

3. Classification of heat treatment processes (1) annealing, (2) martensite formation in steel, (3) precipitation hardening, (4) surface hardening

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Some Issues on Heat treatment

4. Annealing

Heat -> Soaking -> Cooling

-Reduce hardness and brittleness -Alter microstructure for desired mechanical properties -Soften metals to improve formability -Recrystalize cold worked (strain hardened) metals -Relieve stress from shaping
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Some Issues on Heat treatment

4. Annealing

Full annealing Normalizing Process Anneal - Recrystallization anneal - Recovery Anneal Stress-relief annealing

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Some Issues on Heat treatment

5. TTT curve principle for Martensite Formation - eutectoid composition - preheat or heat up alloy to austenite.

- austenite to various phases : cooling rate.

Pearlite, P; Bainite, B: alternative forms of ferrite-carbide mixtures

Martensite, M
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Metals Phase diagram for Iron and Carbon

Eutectic

Eutectoid Fe3C

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5. TTT curve principle for Martensite Formation

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Some Issues on Heat treatment

5. TTT curve principle for Martensite Formation

Martensite: hard and brittle

BCT + carbon Tetragonal Ms: the temperature M starts to form.

Ms depends on alloyed element; some are lower than room temperature

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Some Issues on Heat treatment

5. Heat treatment to form Martensite phase

Austenitizing: heat up to a certain temperature to form

Quenching: cooling media: brine: the fastest; air: the slowest Tempering: heat up to temperature below eutectiod

soak for one hour & slow cooling

BCT to BCC
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5. Heat treatment to form Martensite phase

Austenitizing quenching - tempering

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Some Issues on Heat treatment

5. Hardenability

- The relative capacity of a steel to be hardened by

transformation to martensite; hardness penetration - Hardenability = Hardness ? - alloying elements increase the hardenability: to make TTT curve right: to increase the time to start the transformation for Austenite to Martensite
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Heat treatment
6. Precipitation hardening

A necessary condition for metals that can be heat treated to be hard is - Martensite formulation, which includes the following points: (a) The composition of metal, in the range 0.1-0.8 % C;
(b) The Ms should be above the room temperature;

(c) The TTT curve should allow the possibility that the cooling trajectory passes on the left of the nose.
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- Necessary condition may not be met in practice for all compositions of steel
- Further, heat treatment for non-ferrous metals, e.g., aluminum, copper, magnesium, do not follow the martensite formation. This calls for a new process.

Precipitation Hardening process

- Formation of fine particles (precipitates) that act to block the movement of dislocations

- thus strengthen the metal

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Necessary condition for the precipitation process

(1) Composition of the metal has two phases at the room temperature, see Figure 1a (next slide).
(2) When the temperature arises, one phase should be be dissolved, i.e., sloping solvus line

Composition C (next figure) satisfies above conditions

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6. Precipitation hardening
Figure 1a, b

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6. Precipitation hardening
3 steps of precipitation/age hardening: (1) Solution treatment - alloy heated above Ts into alpha-phase and held to dissolve the beta phase (2) Quenching - to the room temperature to create a supersaturated solid solution - It is noted that the structure of martensite is of highly distorted BCC plus excessive carbon dissolved; Figure 2. Supersaturated structure that same feature. 18 Handoutshas 2

6. Precipitation hardening (3) Precipitation treatment (aging)

- Reheat the material to the temperature a little bit above the room temperature, Tp, but below Ts, to cause precipitation of fine particles of the beta phase.
- high strength and hardness achieved in this step - Temp. and time for the step are variables. Higher temp. hardness peaks quickly lower temp more time to harden, but hardness is more

- Over-aging reduction in hardness

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Figure 2

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7. Surface heat treatment

1) Thermo chemical treatment

2) Composition of part surface altered by addition of other elements 3) Adding of carbon, nitrogen, or other elements Carburizing Carbonitriding
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Nitriding

Surface heat treatment

- Carburizing Pack carburizing- Pack carbonaceous materials (charcoal); Very thick hard outer layer Gas carburizing- Diffuse Hydrocarbon fuels (propane in a furnace); thin hard outer layer Liquid carburizing- Diffuse molten salt bath containing sodium cyanide, barium chloride, and other compounds; medium sized hard outer layer
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- Low hardness - Ductile - Capable of withstanding stress

Surface heat treatment

Carburizing -> HRC 60, Thickness: 0.025 4 mm Nitriding -> HRC 70, Thickness: 0.025 0.05 mm

Carbonitriding -> HRC 70, Thickness: 0.07-0.5 mm

Chromizing and Boronizing -> HRC 70

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8. Heat treatment methods and facilities

1. Heat treatment furnaces

2. Surface hardening methods - flame hardening - induction heating - Laser beam heating

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