Title: Heat Treatment (Annealing)

Location: BF-001, Mechanical Workshop#1

Heat Treatment (Annealing)

ENGINEERING MATERIALS LAB –V

A. Heat Treatment
Heat treatment is any one of a number of controlled heating and cooling operations used to bring
about a desired change in the physical properties of a metal. Its purpose is to improve the structural
and physical properties for some particular use or for subsequent work on the metal. There are five
basic heat treatment processes: hardening, case hardening, annealing, normalizing, and tempering.
Although each of these processes bring about different results in metal, all of them involve three
basic steps: heating, soaking, and cooling.
Heating
Heating is the first step in a heat-treating process. Many alloys change structure when they are
heated to specific temperatures. The structure of an alloy at room temperature can be either a
mechanical mixture, a solid solution, or a combination solid solution and mechanical mixture.
A mechanical mixture can be compared to concrete. Just as the sand and gravel are visible and held
in place by the cement. The elements and compounds in a mechanical mixture are clearly visible
and are held together by a matrix of base metal. A solid solution is when two or more metals are
absorbed, one into the other, and form a solution. When an alloy is in the form of a solid solution,
the elements and compounds forming the metal are absorbed into each other in much the same way
that salt is dissolved in a glass of water. The separate elements forming the metal cannot be
identified even under a microscope. A metal in the form of a mechanical mixture at room
temperature often goes into a solid solution or a partial solution when it is heated. Changing the
chemical composition in this way brings about certain predictable changes in grain size and
structure. This leads to the second step in the heat treating process ‘soaking’.
Soaking
Once a metal part has been heated to the temperature at which desired changes in its structure will
take place, it must remain at that temperature until the entire part has been evenly heated
throughout. This is known as soaking. The more mass the part has, the longer it must be soaked.
Cooling
After the part has been properly soaked, the third step is to cool it. Here again, the structure may
change from one chemical composition to another, it may stay the same, or it may revert to its
original form. For example, a metal that is a solid solution after heating may stay the same during
cooling, change to a mechanical mixture, or change to a combination of the two, depending on the
Title: Heat Treatment (Annealing)
Location: BF-001, Mechanical Workshop#1

type of metal and the rate of cooling. All of these changes are predictable. For that reason, many
metals can be made to conform to specific structures in order to increase their hardness, toughness,
ductility, tensile strength, and so forth.

B. Annealing
Annealing is the most common of all the heat treatment processes. Metal is annealed by heating it
to a prescribed temperature, holding it at that temperature for the required time, and then cooling
it back to room temperature. The rate at which metal is cooled from the annealing temperature
varies greatly. Steel must be cooled very slowly to produce maximum softness. This can be done
by burying the hot part in sand, ashes, or some other substance that does not conduct heat readily
(packing), or by shutting off the furnace and allowing the furnace and part to cool together (furnace
cooling).

Why anneal?
There are two main reasons for annealing.
1. The first is to soften the metal and remove stress.
2. The second is to homogenize the structure and make the metal more ductile.

Every time a piece of metal is worked, it accumulates stress and gets harder. The harder it gets, the
more difficult it is to work again. Take something as simple as a coin as an example. The cast slab
of coinage alloy is rolled down to a plate. It becomes so hard that it must be annealed before it can
be rolled further. It may undergo several such cycles before reaching the correct thickness. The
coin sized blanks are then punched out of the strip. The cut faces are hard so the blanks are annealed
again before they can be minted. No final anneal is needed as the hardness from minting process
helps with wear in service. When a metal is cast, the solidification processes result in both macro
and micro segregation of the alloying elements present. Macro segregation needs to be broken
down by mechanical work, but micro segregation can often be homogenized by annealing.

How is it done?
Annealing is basically a very simple process. The metal is heated up, held at temperature for a time,
then it is slow cooled. If the condition of the surface does not matter or cleaning takes place later
(e.g. castings) then it can be done in air. If the surface finish does matter then a protective
atmosphere is used. Typically this would be nitrogen with a small hydrogen addition. Steel is a bit
different from the rest of the metals so it will be addressed separately. Annealing is the most
common of all the heat treatment processes. Every piece of metal has been annealed at least once
and some parts undergo annealing many times during the process of getting converted from raw
material to finished part.
Title: Heat Treatment (Annealing)
Location: BF-001, Mechanical Workshop#1

Cycle 1

Cycle 2

Annealing Figure 1: Process (Cycle 1) and sub-critical (Cycle 2) annealing cycles. The aim of the
process annealing process is to produce a soft material in the minimum time.
The resulting structure is shown in Figure 2.
Title: Heat Treatment (Annealing)
Location: BF-001, Mechanical Workshop#1

The lighter grains are soft ferrite and the dark grains are pearlite. Pearlite is made up of alternating
layers of hard iron carbide and soft ferrite. If it is thought of as glass plates with plasticine in
between, then it will be seen as fairly stiff structure. Figure 2. Ferrite and pearlite in a process
annealed 0.18% carbon steel.

The aim of sub-critical annealing is to coalesce the layers of iron carbide into globules (Figure 3)
and hence produce the very softest material possible. We now have marbles in plasticine; a much
more malleable material. Types Of Annealing
There are two distinct types of steel annealing:
 Title: Heat Treatment (Annealing)
Location: BF-001, Mechanical Workshop#1

1. Process annealing (sometimes called normalizing) carried out in the austenitic range
above 720ºC
2. Subcritical annealing (or spheroidising) which is carried out in the ferritic range below
720ºC.
C. Lab Discussion
1. What is the difference between stress relieving and annealing?
2. Draw the microstructure of a 0.4% carbon steel which is annealed.
3. Draw cooling curve for full annealing process and process annealing for low carbon steel.

Ans #1
When working with met al, it is important to understand the differences between annealing
and stress relieving.

Annealing
Annealing is a heat treatment process that alters the physical and sometimes chemical properties
of a material to increase its ductility and reduce its hardness. I t does this by heating a metal to
just below its melting point and then allowing it to cool slowly over time. This helps relieve internal
stresses caused by machining, grinding, or forming processes, resulting in softer metals that are
easier to work with. There are several types of annealing depending on the desired result, such as
recrystallization annealing or full anneal.

Annealing is a heat treatment process that is used to soften metals or alloys. The metal is heated
to a high temperature and then slo wly cooled. This process increases the metal’s ductility and
reduces its brittleness. Annealing is often used to improve the machinability of metals.

Stress Reliving
Stress relieving is another type of heat treatment process that works differently than ann ealing.
While annealing softens metal particles to make them easier to work with, stress relieving simply
reduces the residual stresses left behind from manufacturing processes such as bending or
welding without changing the material’s structure or propert ies. It does this by heating the metal
until it reaches a certain temperature (usually lower than what is used in annealing) and then
cooling it back down at a controlled rate. This helps remove any internal stresses caused by
 Title: Heat Treatment (Annealing)
Location: BF-001, Mechanical Workshop#1

hardening or other manufactur ing methods so that potential problems down the line can be
avoided.

Stress relieving is a heat treatment process that is used to reduce the stress in metals or alloys.
The metal is heat ed to a high temperature and then slowly cooled. This process decrease s the
metal’s hardness and makes it less likely to break under stress. Stress relieving is often used t o
improve the weldability of metals.

Ans #2