COLD ROLLING AND TENSILE TESTING

OF BRASS

Thesis submitted to
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
For the fulfillment of the degree
Of

Master of Technology
In
Metallurgical & Materials Engineering

By

NIKHIL KOTHARI
Roll No. 12MT30013

Under the guidance of

Professor Tapas Kumar Bandyopadhyay

DEPARTMENT OF Metallurgical & Materials Engineering
 DECLARATION
I certify that
I. The work contained in the Report is original and has been done
by myself under the general supervision of my supervisor.
II. The work has not been submitted to any other Institute for any
degree or diploma.
III. I have followed the guidelines provided by the Institute in
writing the thesis.
IV. I have conformed to the norms and guidelines given in the
Ethical Code of Conduct of the Institute.

Nikhil Kothari
12MT30013
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. Tapas Kumar Bandyopadhyay,

Professor, Metallurgical & Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of
Technology, Kharagpur for supervising my work. I deeply appreciate his
prudent regard on all things. It was due to his guidance and
appreciation that I was able to complete my project.

I would also like to thank, EDM lab in-charge and Metallography for
giving me slot before my queue. At last I would like to thank
Metallurgical & Materials Engineering, IIT Kharagpur for providing me
with all the equipment required for the completion of the project.

NIKHIL KOTHARI

12MT30013
 INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
KHARAGPUR

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the report entitled “Cold Rolling and Tensile
Testing of Brass” submitted by NIKHIL KOTHARI (12MT30013) to the
Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Indian Institute
of Technology, Kharagpur for the award of the degree of Master of
Technology in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering is work carried
out by him under my supervision and guidance during the academic
year 2016-2017. This report is, in my opinion, worthy of consideration
for the degree of Master of Technology in Metallurgical and Materials
Engineering in accordance to the regulation of the Institute

________________________________

(Prof. Tapas Kumar Bandyopadhyay)

Professor, Metallurgical & Materials Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

Date:
Place:
Contents
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................. 5
OBJECTIVE ................................................................................................ 5
COLD ROLLING AND TENSILE TESTING ................................................................5
(Introduction and Literature Review) .................................................................5
OVERVIEW: .............................................................................................5
METALLURGY OF BRASS: ..............................................................................5
MANUFACTURING OF BRASS: ......................................................................... 6
COLD ROLLING ...............7
THE PROCESS: .........................................................................................7
TENSILE TESTING: ........................................................................................8
ANNEALING AND RECRYSTALLISATION EXPERIMENT:.................................................9
CALCULATION OF MECHANICAL PROPERTIES .........................................................9
YOUNG’S MODULUS OF ELASTICITY .................................................................9
ULTIMATE TENSILE STRENGTH ....................................................................... 9
YIELD STRENGTH .....................................................................................10
EXPERIMENTS ............................................................................................11
COLD ROLLING: ......................................................................................11
MICRO-STRUCTURE: .................................................................................11
TENSILE TEST: ........................................................................................11
ANNEALING: ..........................................................................................11
TENSILE TEST: ........................................................................................11
HARDNESS TEST: .....................................................................................11
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS ............................................................................ 12
TENSILE TESTING .......................................................................................15
CONCLUSIONS ...........................................................................................17
FUTURE WORK: .........................................................................................17
REFERENCES .............................................................................................17
ABSTRACT

A small percentage of the energy expended in plastically deforming a material remains

stored in the metal as an increase in internal energy. Changes are produced in both its
physical and mechanical properties. Principally, there is a marked increase in hardness and
electrical resistivity with the amount of cold working. Microstructurally, this increment in
internal energy is associated with an increase in the dislocation density as well as the
density of point defects, such as vacancies and interstitials. For most metals, the
dislocation density increases from the values of 106-107 lines/cm2 (typical of the
annealed state) to 108-109 after a few percent deformation and up to 1011 -1012 lines/
cm2 after heavy deformation.At a more macrostructural level, the grains become
markedly elongated in the direction of working and heavily distorted. This distortion is
evident from a bending of annealing twins and from unevenness in etching caused by local
strain inhomogeneities. While the increased hardness and strength that result from the
working operation can be important.
This report starts with a basic introduction to Cold Rolling and Tensile Testing; their
meaning and characteristics. It then describes the effects as exhibited by Brass.
Microstructures of Brass that has been Cold Rolled to different percentages are reported
and their significance has been analysed. Following that Tensile test has been carried out
on all the samples under study.

OBJECTIVE

To study the effects of cold working on the microstructure and Tensile testing of Brass.

COLD ROLLING AND TENSILE TESTING

(Introduction and Literature Review)

OVERVIEW:
Brass is a metal composed primarily of copper and zinc. Copper is the main component,
and brass is usually classified as a copper alloy. Cold working of brass increases its strength
at the cost of ductility by increasing dislocation density and changing the microstructure.
Understanding material mechanics is critical for engineering. The uniaxial tension test
provide a simple and effective way to characterise a material's response to loading. By
subjecting a sample to a controlled tensile or compressive displacement along a single
axis, the change in dimensions and resulting load can be recorded to calculate a stress-
strain profile.

METALLURGY OF BRASS:
Brass is a metal composed primarily of copper and zinc. Copper is the main component,
and brass is usually classified as a copper alloy. The colour of brass varies from a dark
reddish brown to a light silvery yellow depending on the amount of zinc present; the more
zinc, the lighter the colour. Brass is stronger and harder than copper, but not as strong or
hard as steel. It is easy to form into various shapes, a good conductor of heat, and
generally resistant to corrosion from salt water. Because of these properties, brass is used
to make pipes and tubes, weather-stripping and other architectural trim pieces, screws,
radiators, musical instruments, and cartridge casings for firearms.
The main component of brass is copper. The amount of copper varies between 55% and
95% by weight depending on the type of brass and its intended use. Brasses containing a
lower percentage of copper can also be made from electrically refined copper, but are
more commonly made from less-expensive recycled copper alloy scrap.

The second component of brass is zinc. The amount of zinc varies between 5% and 40% by
weight depending on the type of brass.

Brasses with a higher percentages of zinc are stronger and harder, but they are also more
difficult to form and have less corrosion resistance. The zinc used to make brass is a
commercial grade sometimes known as spelter.

MANUFACTURING OF BRASS:

The manufacturing process used to produce brass involves combining the appropriate raw
materials into a molten metal, which is allowed to solidify. The shape and properties of
the solidified metal are then altered through a series of carefully controlled operations to
produce the desired brass stock.
The actual manufacturing process depends on the desired shape and properties of the
brass stock. Here is a typical manufacturing process used to produce brass sheet and strip.

Melting
• The appropriate amount of suitable copper alloy scrap is weighed and transferred
into an electric furnace where it is melted at about 1,920°F (1,050°C). After
adjusting for the amount of zinc in the scrap alloy, an appropriate amount of zinc is
added after the copper melts. A small amount of additional zinc, about 50% of the
total zinc required, may be added to compensate for any zinc that vaporises during
the melting operation.
• The molten metal is poured into molds and allowed to solidify into slabs called
cakes. In some operations, the melting and pouring are done semi-continuously to
produce very long slabs.
• When the cakes are cool enough to be moved, they are dumped out of the molds
and moved to the rolling area where they are stored.

Hot rolling
• The cakes are placed in a furnace and are reheated until they reach the desired
temperature. The temperature depends on the final shape and properties of the
brass stock.
• The heated cakes are then fed through a series of opposing steel rollers which
reduce the thickness of the brass step-by-step to about 0.5 in (13 mm) or less. At
the same time, the width of the brass increases. This process is sometimes called
breakdown rolling.
• The brass, which is now much cooler, passes through a milling machine called a
scalper. This machine cuts a thin layer off the outer faces of the brass to remove
any oxides which may have formed on the surfaces as a result of the hot metal's
exposure to the air.

Annealing and cold rolling

• As the brass is hot rolled it gets harder and more difficult to work. It also loses its
ductility, or ability to be stretched further. Before the brass can be rolled further,
it must first be heated to relieve some of its hardness and make it more ductile.
This process is called annealing. The annealing temperatures and times vary
according to the brass composition and desired properties. Larger pieces of hot-
 rolled brass may be placed in a sealed furnace and annealed together in a batch.
Smaller pieces may be placed on a metal belt conveyer and fed continuously
through a furnace with airtight seals at each end. In either method, the
atmosphere inside the furnace is filled with a neutral gas like nitrogen to prevent
the brass from reacting with oxygen and forming undesirable oxides on its surface.
• The annealed pieces of brass are then fed through another series of rollers to
further reduce their thickness. This process is called cold rolling because the
temperature of the brass is much lower than the temperature during hot rolling.
Cold rolling deforms the internal structure of the brass, or grain, and increases its
strength and hardness. The more the thickness is reduced, the stronger and harder
the material becomes. The cold-rolling mills are designed to minimise deflection
across the width of the rollers in order to produce brass sheets with near-uniform
thickness.

Finish rolling
• The sheets may be given a final cold rolling to tighten the tolerances on the
thickness or to produce a very smooth surface finish. They are then cut to size,
stacked or coiled depending on their thickness and intended use, and sent to the
ware-house for distribution.
• The strip may also be given a final finish rolling before it is cut to length, coiled,
and sent to the warehouse.

COLD ROLLING

THE PROCESS:
Cold rolling occurs with the metal below its recrystallisation temperature (usually at room
temperature), which increases the strength via strain hardening up to 20%. It also
improves the surface finish and holds tighter tolerances.

A small percentage of the energy expended in plastically deforming a material remains

stored in the metal as an increase in internal energy. Changes are produced in both its
physical and mechanical properties. Principally, there is a marked increase in hardness and
electrical resistivity with the amount of cold working.
Microstructurally, this increment in internal energy is associated with an increase in the
dislocation density as well as the density of point defects, such as vacancies and
interstitials. For most metals, the dislocation density increases from the values of 106-107
lines/cm2 (typical of the annealed state) to 108-109 after a few percent deformation and
up to 1011 -1012 lines/cm2 after heavy deformation.

Flat rolling
Flat rolling is the most basic form of rolling with the starting and ending material having a
rectangular cross-section. The material is fed in between two rollers, called working rolls,
that rotate in opposite directions. The gap between the two rolls is less than the thickness
of the starting material, which causes it to deform. The decrease in material thickness
causes the material to elongate. The friction at the interface between the material and
the rolls causes the material to be pushed through. The amount of deformation possible in
a single pass is limited by the friction between the rolls; if the change in thickness is too
great the rolls just slip over the material and do not draw it in.[1] The final product is
either sheet or plate, with the former being less than 6 mm (0.24 in) thick and the latter
greater than; however, heavy plates tend to be formed using a press, which is termed
forming, rather than rolling.
TENSILE TESTING:

For uniaxial tests, the displacement is typically held at a constant rate, and displacement
and resulting load are recorded. The load is measured by a series of strain gages, or “load
cell,” while the displacement can be recorded as displacement of the crosshead, or the
beam on which the specimen load frame is mounted. For more precise load
measurements, strain gages or an extensometer can be directly fixed to the specimen. To
make direct comparisons between materials, loading responses must be normalised
against sample geometry. Therefore, the dimensions of each sample are noted to compute
stress and strain from load and displacement, respectively. Engineering strain can be
calculated as:
εe = ΔL/Lo (1)
Where ΔL is the measured displacement and Lo is initial sample length along a single axis.
Engineering stress can be calculated as:
σe = P/Ao (2)
Where P is the applied load and Ao is the initial cross sectional area of the sample normal
to the loading direction. In tensile tests, specimens typically have two shoulders and a
gauge section in between, as so:

The shoulders are large so that they may be gripped by the testing apparatus. The neck,
as a region of reduced cross-sectional area, localizes stress and ensures that failure
consistently occurs near the middle. The cross sectional area, Ao, may be taken as that of
the neck region. In compressive tests, specimens are typically cylinders.
ANNEALING AND RECRYSTALLISATION EXPERIMENT:

Deformation processing is a useful method to obtain desired dimensions and precise

properties of a material. The creation and motion of dislocations is directly involved with
the deformation in a material. An increase in the density of dislocations is called strain
hardening, which strengthens the material since the movement of the dislocations is
restricted. An increased dislocation density may cause the material to become extremely
brittle, leaving the material with a low elongation percentage. A technique used to reduce
this dislocation density is to anneal the material. The time and temperature of the anneal
depends on the material, the desired final properties, and the degree of prior cold work of
the material. When a material is annealed there are three separate phases that the
material goes through. The first phase, recovery, is the initial state of annealing in which
atomic mobility is sufficient to allow some softening of the material without a significant
micro-structural change. The second phase, recrystallisation, is the nucleation and growth
of a new stress-free microstructure from a cold-worked microstructure. During this phase,
there is a drop in hardness in the material, and the dislocations within the microstructure
pass out of the material. The final phase, grain growth, is the increase in average grain
size of a polycrystalline microstructure due to solid-state diffusion.
In this experiment, the effects of annealing on various micro-structural and mechanical
properties are investigated with the use of various materials.

CALCULATION OF MECHANICAL PROPERTIES

YOUNG’S MODULUS OF ELASTICITY

Young's modulus of elasticity is given by: Stress/Strain = FL/Ax

L = gauge length
A = cross-sectional area

x = extension
Percentage elongation = (increase in length/original length) * 100

ULTIMATE TENSILE STRENGTH

Ultimate tensile strength = maximum load/original cross-sectional area

Ultimate tensile strength (UTS) is the maximum stress that a material can withstand while
being stretched or pulled. The ultimate tensile strength of a material is calculated by
dividing the cross-section area of the material tested by the stress placed on the material,
generally expressed in terms of pounds or tons per square inch of material.
UTS is the final amount of stress sustained in a tensile test at the exact moment the
object ruptures.
Ultimate tensile strength (UTS) is a material's maximum resistance to fracture. It is
equivalent to the maximum load that can be carried by one square inch of cross-sectional
area when the load is applied as simple tension.
The UTS is usually found by performing a tensile test and recording the engineering stress
versus strain curve. The highest point of the stress-strain curve is the UTS. It is an
intensive property; therefore its value does not depend on the size of the test specimen.
However, it is dependent on other factors, such as:
• Preparation of the specimen
• Presence of surface defects
• Temperature of the test environment and the material.

YIELD STRENGTH

Yield strength refers to an indication of maximum stress that can be developed in a

material without causing plastic deformation. It is the stress at which a material exhibits a
specified permanent deformation and is a practical approximation of the elastic limit.
In design applications, the yield strength is often used as an upper limit for the allowable
stress that can be applied. It is especially important in material applications that require
precise dimensional tolerances to be maintained in the presence of high stresses and
loads.
EXPERIMENTS

COLD ROLLING:
A sample of Brass underwent rolling:
• The first sample was rolled to reduce its thickness by 10%.
• The second sample was rolled to reduce its thickness by 30%.
• The third sample was rolled to reduce its thickness by 50%.

MICRO-STRUCTURE:
• Microstructural analysis of the specimens were carried out using optical microscope Leica
DP4 at the magnification of 5x, 10x, 20x.
•Slow-speed cutters were used for cutting the sample to avoid stressing the sample.
•Grade 1/0, 2/0 and 3/0 emery papers were used for polishing the samples followed by
diamond polishing and a final polishing using colloidal silica.
• The etchant used for the samples was FECL3, HCL and H20. The etchant used was not
borrowed from any literature. The etchant was synthesised by continuously varying the
amounts of the chemicals and then observing the resultant microstructure under a
microscope.

TENSILE TEST:
• Tensile test was performed on these cold rolled sample on UTM Intron Model 3365 and
the mechanical properties of these samples were calculated.

ANNEALING:
• Annealing was performed at 300 C for 1 hour on these 10, 30 and 50% cold rolled sample
and then was furnace cooled.

TENSILE TEST:
• Tensile test was performed on these annealed sample on UTM Intron Model 3365 and the
mechanical properties of these samples were calculated.

HARDNESS TEST:
• Rockwell hardness was measured for both, the cold work samples and the annealed
samples.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Microstructures
10% COLD ROLLED BRASS

5x Magnification of 10% cold rolled Brass 10x Magnification of 10% cold rolled Brass

20x Magnification of 10% cold rolled Brass

30% COLD ROLLED BRASS

5x Magnification of 30% cold rolled Brass 10x Magnification of 30% cold rolled Brass

20x Magnification of 30% cold rolled Brass

50% COLD ROLLED BRASS

5x Magnification of 50% cold rolled Brass 10x Magnification of 50% cold rolled Brass

20x Magnification of 50% cold rolled Brass

TENSILE TESTING
CONCLUSIONS

1. The microstructures of Brass cold rolled to a reduction of 10%, 30%, 50% were
obtained.
The grain size was reduced and dislocations were increased with increasing
percentage of size reduction.
2. Tensile testing of all the three samples was carried out and the mechanical
properties were studied.
3. In theory, annealing should not have any effect on Young’s modulus, but the results
of this experiment do not confirm or refute this theory. The compounding errors in
this experiment produce data that that reveal a large deviation in the calculation
of Young’s modulus.
4. By doing nearly 50% cold work on these brass samples, the hardness was relatively
high for the material. As the percent cold work increases, the hardness also
increases. It is impossible to recrystallise a material without cold rolling it.
5. A major reason for annealing a material is to recover its ductility. From the results
of hardness test, it can be confirmed that annealing beyond the recovery stage has
an effect on the hardness of brass.
6. Yield strength and tensile strength are affected by annealing until the stage of
grain growth has reached. Beyond this point, the effect of annealing is minor.

FUTURE WORK:
1. Microstructure analysis of the tensile specimen.
2. Annealing at more temperatures and observing the mechanical properties.

REFERENCES

1. A review of transition of microstructure in heavily cold rolled 70:30 brass: W. Y.

Yeung
2. Dieter G, Schmidt L. Engineering design. 2012.
3. Kumar K, Duesbery M, Louat N, Provenzano V, DiPietro M. Microporous fine- grained
copper: structure and properties. Philosophical Magazine A.
4. Zhu Q, Wu W, Liu K, Chen G, Chen W. Study on microstructure and properties of
Brass.
5. Kommel L, Hussainova I, Volobueva O. Microstructure and properties development
of copper during severe plastic deformation.