Chapter-2 Heat Treatment

2.1-Defination:
Heat treatment:

Process in which a metal is heated to a certain temperature and the cooled in a particular manner to
alter its internal structure for obtaining desired degree of physical and mechanical properties such as
brittleness, hardness, and softness.

2.2- purpose of heat treatment:

We heat treat metals in an attempt to optimise the mechanical and physical properties for a given
application. Most people think of heat treatment as a process for hardening metal. This is not necessarily
so, as many heat treatments are applied to soften metal in order to allow metal working operations such
as deep drawing, cold forging and machining.

Where increased strength and wear resistance is required, hardening and tempering treatments are
given. Extremely hard steels find applications in cutting tools where highly defined edges must be
maintained and heat treatment of these steels is a critical operation. Hard surfaces with ductile base
material may be developed by heat treatment.

There are also ageing processes designed to increase the strength of some non ferrous metals and
precipitation hardening steels.

2.3-Constituents of Steel:
Constituents of Steel Points : Constituents of Steel, Ferrite, Cementite, Pearlite, Martensite, Austenite,
Troostite, Sorbite The different microscopic constituents of iron and steels are as follows:

1. Ferrite

2. Cementite

3. Pearlite

4. Martensite

5. Austenite

6. Troostite

7. Sorbite
All these constituents have been described here in brief. Other constituents comprise the allotropic
forms of nearly pure iron, graphite and slag.

2.3.1 Ferrite:

The pure iron grains or crystals are probably called ferrite. Pure iron means carbon-free iron (Fe) It is
soft and ductile. Cooling rapidly cannot harden it. It forms smaller crystals when cooled from a
bright red heat at a rapid rate Low carbon steel and sought iron consist chiefly of ferrite Low carbon
steel examined under the microscope will be observed to contain regions of ferrite and regions of
pearlite. Alpha iron is pure ferrite. The soft and ductile crystals of ferrite are just opposite of iron
carbide (cementite Fe3C) which are extremely hard and brittle.

2.3.2 Cementite:

It Is carbide of iron (Fe3C). it is extremely hard. It increases generally with the proportion of carbon
content. The hardness and brittleness of cast iron is believed to be due to the presence of the
cementite. It s magnetic below 2.50C. Its presence in iron and steel increases hardness but
decreases tensile strength. Its composition by weight is 14 parts of iron and one part are carbon or
93.45% iron and 6.55% carbon its tensile strength is below 3.50 kgf/cm2. It occurs in steel which has
cooled slowly from a high temperature as a constituent of pearlite. The carbon is almost completely
combined with a definite amount of iron to form a carbide of iron.

2.3.3 Pearlite:

It is a mixture of about 87.5% ferrite and 12.5% cementite. It occurs particularly in medium and low
carbon steels in the form of fine lamellae which are usually curved and inter-stratified with those of
ferrite. The name pearlite is derived from the fact that it shows oblique lighting, under the
microscope the rainbow colour of the mother-of- pearl when the etching process has removed a
part of surrounding softer ferrite. Soft steels contain ferrite and pearlite. The hardens increases with
the proportion of cementite. During the process of cooling a slow rate from a red heat cementite
forms a mechanical mixture with ferrite, and appears under high magnification as alternate layers of
cemeiltite and ferrite. This constituent is called pearlite. Slow cooling produced coarse pearlite and
quicker cooling finer pearlite. The carbon content of pearlite is in plain carbon steel is 0.85%.
Pearlite possesses, a tensile strength in the vicinity of 8800 kgf7cm2. pearlite is relatively strong,
hard and ductile, whilst ferrite is weak soft and ductile.
2.3.4 Martensite:
It s the chief constituent of hardened steel. It is of fibrous or needle like structure. It is very hard
and consists of iron with carbon in varying proportion up to about 2%. When it contains iron and
0.9% carbon it is termed as Harden site, which corresponds in composition to that of pearlite or
marten site saturated with carbon. Martensite is not as tough as austenite. Martensite, generally
regarded as a solid solution of carbon or carbide in alpha ferrite, is the chief and characteristic
constituent of hardened steel when cooled rapidly from temperature above the critical range of the
transition constituents-austenite to Sorbite. Martensite is the hardest and also the most brittle, with
little ductility.
 2.3.5 Austenite:

Austenite is the solid solution of carbon or iron carbide (Fe3 C) in gamma iron. When carbon steel is
heated, particularly no change in the constituent occur during the heating until a temperature
corresponding to the lower critical Ac1 is reached; this is at about 724C to 727C. Here there is a
complete change in the nature and structure of the pearlite, and it is known under the general term solid
solution usually called Austenite.

As the temperature is raised from the lower critical Ac1 to the upper critical Ac2, which ends at
about 852C to 854C, the least remaining excess of ferrite or cementite depending on whether it is a
low or high carbon steel, will be absorbed by the austenite, so that above the upper critical range. Ac2
the steel is composed entirely of solid solution-the austenite. Austenite is hard and non-magnetic.

2.3.4 Troostite:
It is another constituent of steel obtained by quenching during transformation period. Cooling the
steel rapidly and then Tempering it may also form it. It may be regarded as a stage in the
transformation of austenite. It occurs as a slightly granular, somewhat amorphous, laminated
structure. Whether it is primary troostite, formed directly from austenite of secondary Troostite
resulting from tempera ring or breaking down of Martiensite, Troostite is intermediate in hardness
between Martiensite and Sorbite.
2.3.5 Sorbite:
When a fully hardened steel is finally drawn at about 6770 C, Sorbite is formed. As the reheating or
drawing temperature is increased still further beyond the temperature range, another stage in the
decomposition of steel begins the change of troostite into Sorbite. Like the change from Martiensite
to Troostite the formation of Sorhite does not take place spontaneously throughout the steel, but
only increases gradually and progressively. Although scorbutic steel is slightly less ductile than
pearlite steel, its tensile strength and yield point are so high that a higher combination of these
three properties can be had in Sorbite than in pearlite steel. Consequently, Steels so treated as to
contain Sorbite are often known as toughened steel.
2.4 Iron carbon equlibrium diagram:

Figure 1. Iron-Carbon Equilibrium Diagram [1]

2.5 Theory of heat treatment of steel:

THEORY:

Steel is the most important engineering and construction material; it accounts for approximately 80 % of
all metals produced. Steel has attained this degree of prominence because it combines strength, ease of
fabricability into many shapes, and a wide range of properties along with low cost. Also it is possible to
give a wide range of mechanical properties to steels by changing the size ad shape of the grains or
changing its microconstituents. This property owes to several different ways that austenite can
decompose.
Fundamentally, all steels are alloys of iron and carbon. So-called plain carbon steels also generally have
small but specified amounts of phosphorus and sulfur. Alloy steels are those which contain specified
percentages of other elements in their chemical compositions.

2.6 Describe the following heat treatment process:

2.6.1 Anneling process:

Annealing is a heat process whereby a metal is heated to a specific temperature /colour and then
allowed to cool slowly. This softens the metal which means it can be cut and shaped more easily. Mild
steel, is heated to a red heat and allowed to cool slowly.

2.6.2 Normalizing process:

Normalizing Heat Treatment process is heating a steel above the critical temperature, holding for a
period of time long enough for transformation to occur, and air cooling. Normalized heat treatment
establishes a more uniform carbide size and distribution which facilitates later heat treatment operations
and produces a more uniform final product.

2.6.3 Quenching process:

In materials science, quenching is the rapid cooling of a workpiece to obtain certain material properties.
A type of heat treating, quenching prevents undesired low-temperature processes, such as phase
transformations, from occurring. It does this by reducing the window of time during which these
undesired reactions are both thermodynamically favorable, and kinetically accessible; for instance,
quenching can reduce the crystal grain size of both metallic and plastic materials, increasing their
hardness.

In metallurgy, quenching is most commonly used to harden steel by introducing martensite, in which
case the steel must be rapidly cooled through its eutectoid point, the temperature at which austenite
becomes unstable. In steel alloyed with metals such as nickel and manganese, the eutectoid
temperature becomes much lower, but the kinetic barriers to phase transformation remain the same.
This allows quenching to start at a lower temperature, making the process much easier. High speed steel
also has added tungsten, which serves to raise kinetic barriers and give the illusion that the material has
been cooled more rapidly than it really has. Even cooling such alloys slowly in air has most of the desired
effects of quenching.

Extremely rapid cooling can prevent the formation of all crystal structure, resulting in amorphous metal
or "metallic glass".

If the percentage of carbon is less than 0.4 percent, quenching is not possible.

2.6.4 Tempering process:

Tempering is a process of heat treating, which is used to increase the toughness of iron-based alloys.
Tempering is usually performed after hardening, to reduce some of the excess hardness, and is done by
heating the metal to some temperature below the critical point for a certain period of time, then
allowing it to cool in still air. The exact temperature determines the amount of hardness removed, and
depends on both the specific composition of the alloy and on the desired properties in the finished
product. For instance, very hard tools are often tempered at low temperatures, while springs are
tempered to much higher temperatures.

2.6.5 Surface hardening process:

Case-hardening or surface hardening is the process of hardening the surface of a metal object while
allowing the metal deeper underneath to remain soft, thus forming a thin layer of harder metal (called
the "case") at the surface.