Heat Treatment

School of Mechanical Engineering, VIT University, Vellore 1

TTT(IT) CCT

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Unit III
• Heat Treatment –

– Annealing and its types,

– Normalizing,

– Quenching and Temper heat treatment,

– Aus-tempering, Mar-tempering

• Hardenability

– Basic concepts of wear and corrosion & their types

• Surface hardening processes

– Flame and induction hardening,

– Carburizing, Nitriding and Carbonitriding

References Book

 An Introduction to Physical Metallurgy – Sydney H. Avner (Tata McGraw Hill Edition)

 W.D. Callister, Jr., Materials Science and Engineering: An Introduction, 8th ed., Wiley & Sons

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Introduction to Heat Treatment
• Heat treating is a group of industrial and metal working processes used to alter
the physical and sometimes chemical properties of a material.

• Most of the engineering components are made out of casting, forging, rolling and
welding and other processes

• The most common application is in the metallurgical industry. Heat treatments are also
used in the manufacture of many other materials, such as glass.

• During processing, these components may be subjected to severe stresses or it may

have residual stresses

• Heat treatments are the only solutions to recover and refine the grains by removing the
internal stresses from the materials

• Heat treatment involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme temperatures,
to achieve a desired result such as hardening or softening of a material.

• Heat treatment techniques include annealing, case hardening, precipitation

strengthening, tempering and quenching.
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Definition
• “ A combination of heating and cooling operations, timed and applied to a metal / alloy in
the solid state in such a way that will produce desirable properties” - ASM Hand Book
Definition

• Heat treatment is often associated with increasing the strength of the materials and also
to alter certain manufacturing objectives such as improving the machinability, formability
and ductility

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Physical processes
• Heat treatment provides an efficient way to manipulate the properties of the metal by
controlling the rate of diffusion and the rate of cooling within the microstructure.

• Heat treating is often used to alter the mechanical

properties of an alloy, manipulating properties such as
the hardness, strength, toughness, ductility,
and elasticity.

• In most heat treatable alloys, the nucleation at the grain-

boundaries often reinforces the structure of the crystal
matrix.

• Many metals and non-metals exhibit

a martensite transformation when cooled quickly i.e.,
when a metal is cooled very quickly, the insoluble atoms
may not be able to migrate out of the solution in time. This
is called as a "diffusionless transformation”.
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 Stages in Heat Treatment - Basic Operations / Stages
• Heating the steel
sample (0.8% carbon
steel) to above UCT

• Soaking the steel at

that particular
temperature for a
sufficient period of
time to permit / allow
the necessary
changes to occur - to
transformation
• Cooling is done at the pre-determined rate. Based on the cooling media, the cooling rates will
be different. This will affect the microstructure, mechanical properties of the material .

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Objectives of Annealing

• Annealing is carried out keeping the following objectives in mind

• To relieve internal stresses developed during rolling, machining, forging, welding etc.

• To improve or restore Ductility and Toughness.

• To enhance machinability and remove chemical non-uniformity.

• To refine grain size and structure.

• For enhancement of magnetic and electrical properties.

• For removal of gases in steels.

• Usually done as preparation for further work.

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