Prof Ind.

qxp 4/27/2009 1:57 PM Page 1

PROFESSOR INDUCTION
by Dr. Valery I. Rudnev, FASM, Inductoheat Group

Metallurgical insights
for induction heat treaters
PART 7: BARBER-POLE, SNAKE-SKIN, AND FISH-TAIL PHENOMENA
Entries in the “Metallurgical insights for
induction heat treaters” series alternate
with those in the “Systematic analysis of
induction coil failures” series.
ically related to a nonuniform surface oxidation and
scale formation.
In some cases, the barber-pole effect might not be
associated with any appreciable microstructural vari-
ations of as-hardened areas of the workpiece, and
would not affect part performance. Therefore, in cases

H eat-treat practitioners sometimes observe un-

usual effects in induction hardening, such as a
striping phenomenon, a barber-pole effect, fish-tail
when the visual appearance of the part surface is not
critical, the barber-pole effect might only be aes-
thetically unpleasing, but has no detrimental effect
effect, soft spotting, and a snake-skin effect. The ap- on heat-treated part performance.
pearance of different types of a striping phenomenon However, in other instances[1,3,4], the barber-pole Professor Induction
was discussed in Part 6 of Metallurgical insights for effect can alter the microstructural homogeneity of welcomes comments,
questions, and
induction heat treaters[1]. The barber-pole, snake-skin, the hardened pattern due to improper quenching suggestions for future
and fish-tail effects are discussed here. or interrupted (or partial) quench flow. Formation columns. Since 1993,
of upper transformation products (including lower Dr. Rudnev has been on
and upper bainite and pearlite) within the marten- the staff of Inductoheat
Barber-pole effect
Group, where he currently
The appearance of the striping phenomenon that sitic structure or the appearance of undesirable tem- serves as group director
occurs during induction heating has been discussed pered martensite can be attributed to the barber-pole – science and technology.
in Ref.1 and 2. According to this phenomenon, mul- effect as well, leading to a combination of hard and He has 28 years of
experience in induction
tiple hot and cold stripes can be observed by the soft (partially hardened) spirals. Experience shows
heating. His expertise
naked eye on the cylinder surface during its heating. that improvement in quench flow, its severity and uni- is in materials
Similar striping effects can also be observed upon formity, or applying a quench follower, as well as science, metallurgy,
quenching of uniformly heated workpieces using ei- making improvements in the eccentricity of a rotated electromagnetics, heat
treating, computer
ther a single-turn or multi-turn coil with or without part part and modifying the impingement of spray strokes modeling, and process
rotation. helps to avoid an appearance of the barber-pole development. Credits
Traditionally, the striping phenomenon that ap- effect. include 21 patents and
peared after quenching is often called a quench- Induction heat treaters often refer to the barber- 154 publications.
Contact Dr. Rudnev at
striping effect or a barber-pole effect[2,3]. The barber- pole effect as a phenomenon that has no association Inductoheat Group
pole effect that appears in heat treating might not with an appearance of any stripes, rings, or spi- 32251 North Avis Drive
relate to the specifics of heating, but is primarily rals. Sometimes, during induction heating of cylin- Madison Heights,
MI 48071;
associated with the characteristics of quenching ders, a shifted, or squeezed temperature profile sud-
tel: 248/629-5055;
including: denly appears at the workpiece surface instead of a fax: 248/589-1062;
• Part rotation straight heating pattern (Fig. 1). This can take place e-mail: rudnev@
• Specifics of spray quench flow along the work- when using single- inductoheat.com;
Straight Shifted www.inductoheat.com.
piece surface after the spray quench impinged turn or multi-turn thermal thermal
(stroked) its surface coils, and it does pattern pattern
• Scan speed not appear to be
• Presence of quench interruptions, or formation related to the helix
of steam pockets, etc. of a multi-turn coil Heated
cylinder
Similar to the striping phenomenon type “B” that winding. This phe-
appears during induction heating[1,2], the barber-pole nomenon is usu-
effect has never been obtained by mathematical mod- ally quite unstable,
eling. It has only been observed in induction heating and when the next Fig. 1 — Appearance of a shifted, or
applications. Barber pole stripes are usually of spiral part is heated, the squeezed, temperature profile
(right) instead of a straight heating
shapes that could occur on the surface of an as- barber-pole effect pattern (left) due to the occurrence
quenched steel or cast iron workpiece, and are typ- could disappear of a barber-pole effect.

HEAT TREATING PROGRESS •MAY/JUNE 2009 15

Prof Ind.qxp 4/27/2009 1:57 PM Page 2

and may never be seen again. If this type
of barber-pole effect is steady, it can be
eliminated by slightly reducing the scan
speed and changing power and/or part
rotation.
Snake-skin effect
and soft-spotting phenomena
The snake-skin phenomenon represents
one of variations of soft spotting. It appears
as alternating soft and hard spots within
the as-quenched structure (looking some-
what similar to the skin of the snake) and
can often be seen by the naked eye on the
workpiece surface (Fig. 2). Soft spots rep-
resent regions where upper transforma-
tion products were formed. This phenom-
enon usually takes place when small
coil-to-workpiece gaps are applied in com-
bination with a substantial quenchant pres-
sure and sparsely located spray nozzles.
To improve coil electrical efficiency, in-
experienced inductor builders who lack
adequate theoretical knowledge might de-
sign MIQ (machined integral quench) in-
ductors having a substantially small coil-
to-workpiece air gap. It is important to re-
member that induction hardening is a two-
part process: heating and quenching.
Lower than expected hardness readings
(soft spots) can occur due to insufficient
quenching, or trapped hot quench pockets.
Properly designed MIQ inductors or use
of quenching blocks with slightly enlarged
coil-to-workpiece gaps and quench holes
eliminate this undesirable phenomenon
without having any noticeable reduction
in coil electrical efficiency. Under identical
heating and quenching conditions, cast
irons are usually more prone to this phe-
nomenon than carbon steels, because irons
have lower thermal conductivity than steels.
Different variations of the soft-spotting phe-
nomenon are observed when heating com-
plex-shaped parts with an interrupted
quench, or if quench flow is deflected or
unintentionally blocked due to geometrical
complexity. Presence of steam pockets can
also result in appearance of the soft-spot-
ting effect.
All components of an induction heat
treating system, including tooling and fix-
Fig. 2 — Snake-skin pattern [2] .
tures, should be reviewed when soft spot-
ting occurs. For example, worn bearings
can result in part wobbling during its ro-
tation. That a part is rotating is sometimes
deceiving, because it creates an illusion
that workpiece rotation automatically pro-
vides required uniformity of both heating
and quenching stages. However, it should
be recognized that worn bearings can
lead to a situation where regardless of the
part rotation, certain regions can always
be positioned closer to the induction coil,
and during heating, those areas will ex-
perience more intense heating. In addi-
tion, the same areas of the part will also

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16 HEAT TREATING PROGRESS • MAY/JUNE 2009

Prof Ind.qxp 4/27/2009 1:57 PM Page 3

be located closer to quenching device copper buses used in the fabrication of a

during quenching, often resulting in more
intense quenching.
In contrast, if the part wobbling is meas-
urable, opposite regions of the workpiece
could experience appreciably less inten-
sive heating and a noticeably milder
quench severity. Both factors potentially
can result in the appearance of surface
soft-spotting and reduced hardness case
depth.
When hardening gears and splines, it
is also important to appreciate a “quench-
bouncing” phenomenon where teeth of
gears and splines can function as paddles
bouncing off the quenching strikes, re-
sulting in nonuniform quenching and soft
spots.
To eliminate soft-spotting requires re-
designing the spray-quench system by
taking into consideration the geometrical
features of the particular heat treated part.
Part rotation should be smooth without any
significant wobbling.
shaft hardening single-turn inductor (top)
and multi-turn strip heating coil (bottom).
Figure 4a shows the location of the fish-
tail effect and an instantaneous orienta-
tion of the electrical current (arrows shown
in magenta color). A magnetic field is
formed by incoming and outgoing elec-
trical currents oriented in opposite direc-
tions at the areas where connection busses
(coil terminals) join an inductor copper.
This results in a magnetic field distortion
that leads to a heat deficit within the cor-
responding workpiece region, and is often
referred as the fish-tail effect (or flux-fringing
effect). One of the typical solutions to com-
pensate for a fish-tail effect is to rotate the
part during heating, ensuring that all re-
gions of the workpiece absorb same en-
ergy during the entire process cycle.
In recent years, some induction heat-
ing manufacturers developed and paten-

Fish-tail effect (field-fringing effect)

Conventionally designed single-turn in-
ductors and some multi-turn coils have
areas where there is an inevitable distor-
tion of the magnetic field, which could lead
to an appearance of regions with a heat
deficit and where undesirable microstruc-
tures can be produced. One region is re-
lated to an area where copper busses that
transmit electrical current from a power
source are connected to an induction coil.
These connectors sometimes have the
shape of a fish tail, and the region is often
called a fish-tail region of the inductor.
Figure 3 shows fish tail-shaped connection

Fig. 3 — Fish tail-shaped buses of inductor terminals: (inset) single-turn inductor for hardening shafts;
(bottom) multi-turn inductor for heating strip.

HEAT TREATING PROGRESS • MAY/JUNE 2009 17

Prof Ind.qxp 4/27/2009 1:57 PM Page 4
Electric current ted [5,6] a variety of advanced means to ef-
Inductor Fish-ttail fectively control magnetic flux, thus pro-
(fringing) viding compensation for the fish-tail ef-
effect fect and magnetic field fringing at
inductor terminals. To illustrate, Fig. 4b
and 4c show two simplified approaches
that allow compensating for the fish-tail
Inductor
effect and eliminate the need to rotate the
Shaft terminals
(a) heated workpiece. In both cases, im-
proved electromagnetic coupling at the
fish-tail region of inductor allows com-
Inductor Compensated
fish-ttail pensating for magnetic field fringing at
effect that location.
The fish-tail effect was one of the chal-
lenges solved during development of an
innovative non-rotational crankshaft hard-
ening technology. Figure 5 shows the in-
Inductor
Shaft terminals ductor used in Inductoheat’s CrankPro
machine implementing patented non-ro-
(b)
tation crankshaft and camshaft surface
Inductor Compensated hardening technology[2, 5-7].
fish-ttail According to the patented non-rotational
effect
hardening process, an inductor consists
of two coils (Fig. 5): a top (passive) coil
and a bottom (active) coil. The bottom coil,
being active, is connected to a medium-
Inductor
Shaft terminals or high-frequency power supply, while the
(c) top coil represents a short circuit (a loop).
The bottom coil is a stationary coil, while
Fig. 4 — Appearance of fish-tail effect and its a top coil can be opened
corrections.
and closed. Each coil has
two semi-circular areas
where the appropriate
crankshaft journals are lo-
cated.
After loading a crank-
shaft into the heating posi-
tion, the top coil moves into a
closed position and power is ap-
plied to the bottom coil. The cur-
rent starts to flow in the bottom coil.
Being electromagnetically coupled to
the top coil, current flowing in the bottom
coil induces eddy currents that start to flow
in the top coil. The induced eddy currents
are oriented in the opposite direction com-
pared with a source current similar to a
transformer effect. Any heated feature of
the crankshaft “sees” the inductor
as a classical fully encir-
cling, highly electri-
cally efficient coil with
two fishtail regions.
The fish-tail effect was
compensated for and
Fig. 5 — Patented non-rotational effectively controlled
crankshaft hardening inductor. using patented coil design in-
Courtesy of Inductoheat Inc. novations[5, 6]. Figure 6 shows
18 HEAT TREATING PROGRESS • MAY/JUNE 2009
Fig. 6 — Transverse cross section of a surface-
hardened crankshaft main journal does not
reveal any traces of a fish-tail effect as a result
of using patented design corrections.
a transverse cross section of the surface
hardened crankshaft main journal. Due to
the advanced inductor design, there is
no indication of soft spots or case depth
loss, which typically occurs using a con-
ventional design. Non-rotational induc-
tion hardening and tempering technology
provides several benefits such as simple
operation, superior reliability, quality,
maintainability, cost reduction, and
quality of induction hardened crankshafts
and camshafts[2, 5-7].
The patented approaches to control the
fish-tail effect can be successfully used in
other induction heat treating applications,
particular where single-turn inductors are
used. When long, multi-turn inductors are
used (for example, forging coils), the fish-
tail effect is not pronounced and usually it
is not necessary to compensate for it. HTP
References
1. V. Rudnev, Metallurgical insights for induc-
tion heat treaters. Part 6: Striping phenomena,
Heat Treating Progress, ASM Intl., p 21-22,
Nov./Dec., 2008.
2. V.Rudnev, D.Loveless, R.Cook, and M.Black,
Handbook of Induction Heating, Marcel Dekker,
2003.
3. R.Haimbaugh, Practical Induction Heat
Treating, ASM Intl., 2001.
4. G.E.Totten, et.al. Bath maintenance and trou-
bleshooting of polymer quench-related prob-
lems for induction heat treating, Proc. ASM Heat
Treat Show, p 951-956, 1997.
5. D.Loveless, V.Rudnev, et. al., Induction heat
treatment of complex-shaped workpieces, US
Patent No. 6,274,857, Aug. 14, 2001.
6. V.Rudnev, D.Loveless, Induction heat treat-
ment of complex-shaped workpieces, US Patent
No. 6,859,125, Feb. 22, 2005.
7. G.Doyon, et. al., Taking the crack out of
crankshaft hardening, Ind. Htg., p 41-44, Dec.,
2008.