Matreial Lab  

 
Faculty of Engineering
​ The Hashemite University, Zarqa-Jordan
Heat Treatment

Raghda Khaled Almathhan 1632666

Bayan yaseen 1636313
Maryam Ibraheem 1335586

​Dr. Morad Etier

 
Experiment objectives: 
Steel often requires heat treatment to obtain improved
properties e.g increase hardness or strength, or to remove
internal stresses generated by manufacturing processes.
In the modern engineering world, extensive research has led to
the development of some special grades of steel, often suited
for enhanced functions. Steel is one such grade, having major
applications in power plants, automobile and aerospace
industry. Different heat treatment processes are employed to
achieve high hardness and high wear resistance, but
machinability subsequently decreases. Existing literature is not
sufficient to achieve a balance between hardness and
machinability. The aim of this experimental work is to
determine the hardness values and observe microstructural
changes in steel, when it is subjected to annealing, normalizing
and quenching. Finally, the effects of tempering after each of
these heat treatments on hardness and microstructure have
also been shown. It is seen that the tempering after normalizing
the specimen achieved satisfactory results. The microstructure
was also observed to be consisting of fine grains.
Introduction : 
Steels can be heat treated to produce a great variety of microstructures
and properties. Generally, heat treatment uses phase transformation
during heating and cooling to change a microstructure in a solid state.
In heat treatment, the processing is most often entirely thermal and
modifies only structure. Thermomechanical treatments, which modify
component shape and structure, and thermochemical treatments
which modify surface chemistry and structure, are also important
processing approaches which fall into the domain of heat treatment.

The iron-carbon diagram is the base of heat treatment. Typical heat

treatment operation is presented in fig.
According to cooling rate we can distinguish two main heat
treatment operations:
• annealing – upon slow cooling rate (in air or with a furnace)
• quenching – upon fast cooling (in oil or in water)
annealing - produces equilibrium structures according to the
Fe-Fe3C diagram
quenching - gives non-equilibrium structures
Among annealing there are some important heat treatment
processes like:
• normalizing • spheroidising • stress relieving
Tools and Equipment are used in Experiment  
• Metal Cleaning (Wash-Rinse) Equipment
• Gas fired furnaces
– Direct fired using burners fired directly into a furnace
– Indirect fired furnaces: radiant tube, muffle, retort etc.
– Molten salt (or lead) bath
– Fluidized bed
• Electrically heated Furnaces Electrically heated Furnaces
– Induction heating
– Electrical resistance heating
– Other ( , i.e. Laser, electron-beam etc.)
• Quench or cooling equipment
• Material handling system
• Testing and quality control laboratory equipment
Methodology : 

Heat Treatment Processes

Hardening
Hardening involves heating of steel, keeping it at an appropriate temperature until
all pearlite is transformed into austenite, and then quenching it rapidly in water or
oil. The temperature at which austentizing rapidly takes place depends upon the
carbon content in the steel used. The heating time should be increased ensuring that
the core will also be fully transformed into austenite. The microstructure of a
hardened steel part is ferrite, martensite, or cementite.

Tempering
Tempering involves heating steel that has been quenched and hardened for an
adequate period of time so that the metal can be equilibrated. The hardness and
strength obtained depend upon the temperature at which tempering is carried out.
Higher temperatures will result into high ductility, but low strength and hardness.
Low tempering temperatures will produce low ductility, but high strength and
hardness. In practice, appropriate tempering temperatures are selected that will
produce the desired level of hardness and strength. This operation is performed on
all carbon steels that have been hardened, in order to reduce their brittleness, so
that they can be used effectively in desired applications.

Annealing
involves treating steel up to a high temperature, and then cooling it very
slowly to room temperature, so that the resulting microstructure will
possess high ductility and toughness, but low hardness. Annealing is
performed by heating a component to the appropriate temperature,
soaking it at that temperature, and then shutting off the furnace while the
piece is in it. Steel is annealed before being processed by cold forming,
to reduce the requirements of load and energy, and to enable the metal to
undergo large strains without failure.

Normalizing
Normalizing involves heating steel, and then keeping it at that
temperature for a period of time, and then cooling it in air. The resulting
microstructure is a mixture of ferrite and cementite which has a higher
strength and hardness, but lower ductility. Normalizing is performed on
structures and structural components that will be subjected to machining,
because it improves the machinability of carbon steels.

Carburization
It is a heat treatment process in which steel or iron is heated to a
temperature, below the melting point, in the presence of a liquid solid, or
gaseous material which decomposes so as to release carbon when heated
to the temperature used. The outer case or surface will have higher
carbon content than the primary material. When the steel or iron is
rapidly cooled by quenching, the higher carbon content on the outer
surface becomes hard, while the core remains tough and soft.

Surface Hardening
In many engineering applications, it is necessary to have the surface of
the component hard enough to resist wear and erosion, while
maintaining ductility and toughness, to withstand impact and shock
loading. This can be achieved by local austentitizing and quenching, and
diffusion of hardening elements like carbon or nitrogen into the surface.
Processes involved for this purpose are known as flame hardening,
induction hardening, nitriding and carbonitriding.

 
 

Data Analysis: 

Metho Water Oil Furnace Normalizing  Tempering  sand 

d  quench
Bhn  507  432 153 255 290 210
  

This graph showing the hardness number for the 

samples:  

 
  
 

-order of the samples with respect to the cooling rates:

Water quench rapid cooling
Oil
Tempering
Normalizing
Sand
Furnace slow cooling
Why the hardness numbers are different for
different samples:
The steel alloys have a different hardenability that
specify the ease of produce a martensitic
microstructure throughout the part of each
methods heated steel at different temperature that
effect the hardness number of steel

 
Expected produced phases for the samples:
Normalizing: Austenite
Water quench: Martensite
Oil: Martensite
Furnace: Austenite Or Austenite cementite
Tempering: Martensite
Sand:Martensite
_ ​connect
what we did with respect to the heat
treatment name :
:Annealing
Annealing (or full annealing) is the heating of steel to a
temperature in the austenite stable field (austenitizing), then
slow cooling (furnace cooling) through the transformation
range. The general purpose of an annealing is to increase the
softness of the steel and to produce a structure which
facilitates subsequent manufacturing processes.
Normalizing:
steel is heated to above the A3 or Acm temperatures which are
somewhat higher than for full annealing, to produce a more
uniform microstructure while retaining fine austenite grains.
Compared with annealing, the faster cooling associated with
normalizing reduces pearlitic interlamellar spacing and
proeutectoid ferritic grain size, and decreases the possibility of
formation of grain boundary carbides
Tempering:
Finding the right mixture of hardness-and-ductility can be
achieved through a process called tempering. Tempering is often
done with quenched steel to make it less brittle while preserving
some of the hardness. In tempering, a metal is reheated yet
again, but now to a lower temperature than in annealing,
normalizing, or quenching.
Quenching​:
Quenching is a process of cooling a metal at a rapid rate. This is
most often done to produce a martensite transformation. which
produce a harder

4. CONCLUSION

This experiment demonstrated some key differences in

material properties of several heat treatments for steel.
Annealing creates a soft and ductile material that is easy
to machine and perform other operations on. Quenching
creates a very hard and brittle material that has extremely
high yield and tensile strengths. Tempering quenched
steel softens the steel and provides a tradeoff between the
hard and strong quenched steel and the soft annealed
steel. Engineers are benefited by an understanding of heat
treatment because they are better able to predict how a
material will perform when loaded if they know the heat
treatment state of that material. Thus the results of this
experiment, and others like it available in literature, are
very important for designed manufacturing engineers.

REFERENCES:
-Material lab manual

-​ ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_treating
-​ ​https://studylib.net