The Science and Engineering of Materials:

Ch 13 Exercise

Skills Learned: Effects of tempering

Problem:

1. What are the effects of tempering of an alloy?

2. What happens to the microstructure of the alloy during the tempering process?

3. An alloy cast iron part is tempered at 400C. What is the Brinell hardness and tensile
strength of this part?

Solution:
1. Search Knovel for tempering. Open Smithells Metal Reference Book from the
retrieved results. Open the section on tempering.



Found in the text: Tempering, also known as drawing, is the thermal treatment of
hardened steels to obtain the desired mechanical properties which include: improved
toughness and ductility, lower hardness and improved dimensional stability.
2. Search Knovel for tempering. Open Smithells Metal Reference Book from the
retrieved results. Open the section on tempering.

Found in the text: Quenched martensite is transformed into tempered martensite which
is composed of highly dispersed spheroids of cementite (or other carbides) dispersed in a
soft matrix of ferrite, resulting in reduced hardness and increased toughness.
3. Search Knovel for heat treatment and hardness. Open Smithells Metal Reference Book
from the retrieved sections. Open the first graph digitizer. This should be Figure 26.4
Effect of heat treatment on the strength and hardness of alloy cast iron.
Click on the graph digitizer to find the hardness.


On dropdown box for the Y axis, choose Tensile Strength [MPa]. Click tensile strength
at 400C to find the strength at that temperature


Brinell hardness: 380.1
Tensile strength: 397.5 MPa