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    Material Science Notes

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    Ram Chandra
    Hardening is a heat treatment process that involves rapidly cooling steel from its austenizing temperature to improve properties like hardness and wear resistance. This process transforms the steel's microstructure to martensite, contributing to its high hardness. Tempering must then be done to reduce brittleness by reheating the steel below its critical temperature, allowing carbon atoms to diffuse and form a microstructure of ferrite and cementite. Hardenability refers to a steel's ability to form martensite during quenching and is determined through the Jominy end quench test, which measures hardness readings along a test bar quenched at one end.

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    Material Science Notes

    Uploaded by

    Ram Chandra
    51 views2 pages
    Hardening is a heat treatment process that involves rapidly cooling steel from its austenizing temperature to improve properties like hardness and wear resistance. This process transforms the steel's microstructure to martensite, contributing to its high hardness. Tempering must then be done to reduce brittleness by reheating the steel below its critical temperature, allowing carbon atoms to diffuse and form a microstructure of ferrite and cementite. Hardenability refers to a steel's ability to form martensite during quenching and is determined through the Jominy end quench test, which measures hardness readings along a test bar quenched at one end.

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    Hardening is a heat treatment process that involves rapidly cooling steel from its austenizing temperature to improve properties like hardness and wear resistance. This process transforms the steel's microstructure to martensite, contributing to its high hardness. Tempering must then be done to reduce brittleness by reheating the steel below its critical temperature, allowing carbon atoms to diffuse and form a microstructure of ferrite and cementite. Hardenability refers to a steel's ability to form martensite during quenching and is determined through the Jominy end quench test, which measures hardness readings along a test bar quenched at one end.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    51 views2 pages

    Material Science Notes

    Uploaded by

    Ram Chandra
    Hardening is a heat treatment process that involves rapidly cooling steel from its austenizing temperature to improve properties like hardness and wear resistance. This process transforms the steel's microstructure to martensite, contributing to its high hardness. Tempering must then be done to reduce brittleness by reheating the steel below its critical temperature, allowing carbon atoms to diffuse and form a microstructure of ferrite and cementite. Hardenability refers to a steel's ability to form martensite during quenching and is determined through the Jominy end quench test, which measures hardness readings along a test bar quenched at one end.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 2

    Hardening

    Hardening and Hardness are two very different things. One is a process of heat treatment and other is
    a extrinsic property of a material.

    Hardening is a heat treatment process in which steel is rapidly cooled from austenizing temperature.
    As a result of hardening, the hardness and wear resistance of steel are improved, for example in
    Gears, shafts and bearings. Hardening treatment generally consists of heating to hardening
    temperature, holding at that temperature, followed by rapid cooling such as quenching in oil or water
    or salt baths.

    The hardening temperature depends on chemical composition. For plain carbon steels, it depends on
    the carbon content alone. Hypoeutectoid steels are heated to about 30 – 50 0C above the upper critical
    temperature, whereas eutectoid and hyper eutectoid steels are heated to about 30 – 50 0C above lower
    critical temperature. Ferrite and pearlite transform to austenite at hardening temperature for
    hypoectectoid steel. This austenite transforms to martensite on rapid quenching from hardening
    temperature. The presence of martensite accounts for high hardness of quenched steel.

    After hardening, steels must be tempered to:

    (a) Reduce the brittleness


    (b) Relieve the internal stresses
    (c) Obtain the pre-determined mechanical properties.

    Tempering

    Hardened steels are so brittle that even a small impact will cause fracture. Toughness of such steels
    can be improved by tempering. However, there is small reduction in strength and hardness.

    Tempering consists of reheating of hardened steel to a temperature below Lower critical temperature
    and is held for a period of time, and then slowly cooled in air to room temperature. At tempering
    temperature, carbon atoms diffuses out and form fine cementite and softer ferrite structure left behind.
    Thus, the structure of tempered steel consists of ferrite and fine cementite and allowing microstructure
    to become BCC. Also, cracks, distortion can be reduced because of tempering.

    Austempering – It is quenching from a temperature above the transformation range to some


    temperature above the upper limit of martensite formation (Ms), and holding at this temperature until
    the austenite is completely transformed to the desired intermediate structure, for the purpose of
    conferring certain mechanical properties. It is carried out in a medium having a rate of heat
    abstraction high enough to prevent the formation of high temperature transformation products.

    Martempering – It is quenching from a temperature above the transformation range to some


    temperature above the upper limit of martensite formation, holding at that temperature long enough to
    permit equalisation of temperature without transformation of the austenite followed by cooling in air.
    This results into the formation of martensite which may be tempered as desired.
    Hardenability

    Hardenability is one of the most important properties of a steel because it describes the ease
    with which a given steel can be quenched to form martensite or the depth to which martensite
    is formed on a given quench.

    Hardness ≠ Hardenability

    The Hardness of a steel is a measure of a Hardenability refers to its ability to be


    sample's resistance to indentation or hardened to a particular depth under a
    scratching. particular set of conditions.

    Determination of Hardenability – Jominy end quench test

    Jominy End Quench Test

    This method is the most useful and widely accepted. The Jominy test involves heating a standard test
    piece of diameter 25 mm and length 100 mm to the austenite state, fixing it to a frame in a vertical
    position and then quenching the lower end by means of a jet of water. A plot is made of the hardness
    reading against the distance from the quenched end of the test peice/bar.

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