Heat Treatment

Heat treatment refers to the heating and cooling operations required to alter the properties of
metals, alloys plastic and ceramic materials.
Heat treatment of materials involves number of factors – temperature up to which material
is heated, length of time that the material is held at the elevated temperature, rate of
cooling, and the surrounding atmosphere under the thermal treatment. All these factors
depend on material, material’s chemical composition, size and shape of the object, final
properties desired, material’s melting point etc.

The purpose of heat treatment is to achieve any one or more objectives cited as follows:
(i) To remove strain hardening of a cold worked metal and to improve its ductility.
(ii) To relieve internal stresses set up during cold-working, casting, welding and hot-
working treatments.
(iii) To remove gases from castings, to soften a metal to improve its machinability, and
to increase the resistance to wear, heat and corrosion.
(iv) To improve the cutting ability, i.e., hardness of a steel tool, to improve grain
structure after hot working a metal and to remove effects of previously performed
heat-treatment operations.
(v) To improve magnetization property, especially of steels, for producing permanent
magnets.
(vi) To refine grain structure after hot working a metal.
(vii) To soften and toughen a high carbon steel piece.
(viii) To produce a single phase alloy in stainless steel, and to produce a hard, wear
resistant case on a tough core of a steel part.
(ix) To harden non-ferrous metals and alloys, especially aluminium alloys and to
produce a single phase alloy in stainless steel.
(x) To produce a hard, wear resistant case on a tough core of a steel part and to toughen
a hardened steel piece at the cost of its hardness.

Heat Treatment Process:

The principal kinds of heat treatment are:
(i) Annealing (ii) Normalising (iii) Hardening (iv) Tempering (v) Case hardening (vi) Surface
hardening and (vii) Ageing. Each of them has a number of varieties.

1. ANNEALING: The term annealing refers to a heat treatment in which a material is exposed
to an elevated temperature for an extended time period and then slowly cooled.
The various types of annealing operations are: (i) Full annealing, (ii) Process annealing, (iii)
Spheroidise annealing and (iv) Stress relief annealing.

1.1 Full Annealing:

This operation removes all structural imperfections by complete recrystallization. This
operation is often utilized in low and medium carbon steels that will be machined or will
experience extensive plastic deformation during a forming operation. This operation consist
of:
(i) Heating the hypoeutectoid steel to about 50-70°C above the upper critical temperature
(Above A3) and by the same temperature above the lower critical temperature (Above A1)
for hypereutectoid steels until equilibrium is achieved. This ensures that the metal is heated
thoroughly and phase transformation has taken place throughout the whole volume.
(ii) The alloy is then furnace cooled; i.e., the heat-treating furnace is turned off and both
furnace and steel cool to room temperature at the same rate, which takes several hours.
The microstructural product of full anneal is coarse pearlite that is relatively soft and ductile.
The full-annealing cooling procedure is time consuming.

1.2 Process Annealing or Partial Annealing:

This is a heat treatment that is used to negotiate the effects of cold work, i.e. to soften
and increase the ductility of a previously strain hardened metal.
Process annealing or sub-critical annealing which is done on cold worked low carbon steel
sheet, wire or tubing to relieve internal stresses and to soften the material. The process is as
follows:
(i) The steel is heated to 550-650°C, which is just below the lower critical temperature on
iron-carbon diagram for steel.
(ii) Stresses throughout the metal are relieved and recrystallization causes new grains to form
and grow.

1.3 Spherodising Annealing

This type of heat treatment produces carbide in the form of round or globular
(spheroids) instead of plates as in pearlite. This structure gives: good machinability, high
ductility and improvement in formability.
The hardness of a steel is the lowest when the steel structure consists of granular pearlite with
inclusions of rounded-off (spherical) cementitie grains. From this the name ‘spheroidizing’
annealing transpires.
The spheroidizing heat treatment consists of heating the alloy at a temperature just below the
eutectoid phase diagram (line A1 in Fig., or at about 700°C) in the Alpha ferrite + cementite
region of the phase diagram. If the precusor microstructure contains pearlite, spheroidizing
times will ordinarily range between 15 and 25 hours. During this heat annealing there is
coalescence of the Fe3C to form the spheroid particles.
 Photomicrograph of a steel
having a spheroidite
microstructure. The
small particles are cementite

1.4 Stress relief Annealing

Internal residual stresses may develop in metal pieces in response to the following:
(1) plastic deformation processes such as machining and grinding; (2) nonuniform cooling of
a piece that was processed or fabricated at an elevated temperature, such as a weld or a casting;
and (3) a phase transformation that is induced upon cooling wherein parent and product phases
have different densities.
They may be eliminated by a stress relief annealing heat treatment in which the piece is heated
to the recommended temperature, held there long enough to attain a uniform temperature, and
finally cooled to room temperature in air.

2. Normalizing:
This is used as a finishing treatment for carbon steels giving higher strength than
annealing. There is no serious loss of ductility too. Heating and soaking in this process is same
as in the full annealing but part is allowed to cool in air so that cooling rate is much faster. An
annealing heat treatment called normalizing is used to refine the grains. (i.e., to decrease the
average grain size) and produce a more uniform and desirable size distribution. Fine grained
pearlite steels are tougher than coarse-grained ones. The fine grain structure increases the yield
and ultimate strengths, hardness and impact strength.
Normalizing is accomplished by heating at approximately 55 to 85°C above the upper critical
temperature (Above A3 and Acm).
The advantages of this method are:
(i) In comparison to fully annealed material, normalizing produces stronger material.
(ii) Normalizing refines the grains.
(iii) Normalizing produces homogenised structure.
 (iv) Normalizing is used to improve properties of steel castings instead of hardening
and tempering.
(v) Strength and hardness are increased.
(vi) Better surface finish is obtained in machining.
(vii) Resistance to brittle fracture is increased

3. Hardening:
Certain applications demand high tensile strength and hardness values so that the
components may be successfully used for heavy duty purposes. High tensile strength and
hardness values can be obtained by a processes known as Hardening.
Hardening process consists of four steps.
(i) The first step involves heating the steel to above A3 temperature for
hypoeutectoid steels and above A1 temperature for hypereutectoid steels by 50°C.
(ii) The second step involves holding the steel components for sufficient socking time
for homogeneous austenization.
(iii) The third step involves cooling of hot steel components at a rate just exceeding the
critical cooling rate of the steel to room temperature or below room temperature.
Cooling mediums are water medium, oil medium or salt baths. This type of fast
cooling is called Quenching.
(iv) The final step involves the tempering of the martensite to achieve the desired
hardness. Detailed explanation about tempering is given in the subsequent sections.
In this hardening process, the austenite transforms to martensite. This martensite
structure improves the hardness.

Austempering or Isothermal Quenching:

The component or specimen to be hardened is first austenized and then quenched into
a lead or salt bath held at just above the martensite transformation temperature. The component
is kept in the bath until the bainite transformation is completed. Now, the component is
removed from the bath and cooled in air till the room temperature is reached.
Austempering is often limited to section thickness of 20 mm. This is the only limitation in
austempering, i.e. only small sections are suitable for austempering as big sections cannot be
cooled rapidly to avoid the formation of pearlite.

Martempering or Steeped Quenching:

The sample or the specimen to be hardened is fully austenized and then quenched into
a lead or salt bath held at a temperature just above that at which martensite starts to form.
It is maintained at this temperature until its temperature becomes uniform throughout, i.e. there
remains no difference in outside and inside temperatures.
Then it is water quenched to form complete martensitic structure and bainite formation is
prevented.
 Martensitic microstructure The
needleshaped grains are the
martensite phase, and the white
regions are austenite that failed to
transform during the rapid quench.

4. Tempering:
Tempering and ageing are the kinds of heat treatment which are applied to hardened
alloys; they involve certain phase transformations which make the metal structure approach
the equilibrium.
A combination of hardening and tempering or hardening and ageing is almost always aimed
at obtaining higher properties (hardness, strength properties, coercive force, electric
resistance, etc.).
Tempering releases the stresses and reduces the brittleness. Tempering causes the
transformation of the martensite into less brittle structure, i.e., a fine pearlistic structure termed
as troostite. Troostitie is much tougher, although somewhat softer than martensite.

5. Case Hardening:
In case hardening, the surface of the steel is made hard and wear resistant, but the core
remains soft and tough. Such a combination of properties is desired in applications such as
gears.

5.1 Induction hardening:

Here, an alternating current of high frequency passes through an induction coil enclosing the
steel part to be heat treated. The induced emf heats the steel. The depth up to which the heat
penetrates and raises the temperature above the elevated temperature is inversely proportional
to the square root of the ac frequency. In induction hardening, the heating time is usually a few
seconds. Immediately after heating, water jets are activated to quench the surface. Martensite
is produced at the surface, making it hard and wear resistant. The microstructure of the core
remains unaltered. Induction hardening is suitable for mass production of articles of uniform
cross-section.
5.2 Flame hardening:
For large work pieces and complicated cross-sections induction heating is not easy to apply. In
such cases, flame hardening is done by means of an oxyacetylene torch. Heating should be
done rapidly by the torch and the surface quenched, before appreciable heat transfer to the core
occurs.

5.3 Laser hardening:

In this case, a laser beam can be used for surface hardening. As laser beams are of high
intensity, a lens is used to reduce the intensity by producing a defocused spot of size ranging
from 0.5 to 25 mm. Proper control of energy input is necessary to avoid melting. Laser
hardening has the advantage of precise control over the area to be hardened, an ability to harden
reentrant surfaces, very high speed of hardening and no separate quenching step. The
disadvantage is that the hardening is shallower than in induction and flame hardening.

5.4 Carburizing:
Carburizing is the most widely used method of surface hardening. Here, the surface layers of
low carbon steel are enriched with carbon up to 0.8-1.0%. The source of carbon may be a solid
medium, a liquid or a gas. In all cases, the carbon enters the steel at the surface and diffuses
into the steel as a function of time at an elevated temperature. Carburizing is done at 920-950℃.
This fully austenitic state is essential. If carburizing is done in the ferritic region, the carbon,
with very limited solubility in ferrite, tends to form massive cementite particles near the
surface, making the subsequent heat treatment difficult. For this reason, carburizing is always
done in the austenitic state, even though longer times are required due to the diffusion rate of
carbon in austenite being less that in ferrite at such temperatures.

5.5 Cyaniding:
Cyaniding is done in a liquid bath of NaCN, with the concentration varying between 30 and
97%. The temperature used for cyaniding is lower than that for carburizing and is in the range
of 800-870℃. The time of cyaniding is 1-3 hr to produce a case depth of 0.25 mm or less.

5.6 Nitriding:
Nitriding is carried out in the ferritic region. No phase change occurs after nitriding. During
nitriding, pure ammonia decomposes to yield nitrogen which enters the steel. The solubility of
nitrogen in ferrite is small. Most of the nitrogen, that enters the steel, forms hard nitrides (e.g.,
Fe3N). The temperature of nitriding is 500-590℃ . The time for a case depth of 0.02 mm is
about 2 hr. In addition to providing outstanding wear resistance, the nitride layer increases the
resistance of carbon steel to corrosion in moist atmospheres.