SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SARAWAK CAMPUS

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING, COMPUTING AND SCIENCE

MEE20005 MATERIALS AND MANUFACTURING 1
LAB SHEET – 2 / HEAT TREATMENT
Guidelines before you start writing lab report
• Use assignment cover sheet.
• Lab report can be typed.
• Failure to do the above will result in point deductions.

What do you have to do?

Write lab report using the format you have done in previous units. You must have Introduction,
Experimental Procedure, Results, Discussion and Conclusion. Further instruction follows this
section.

Aim

Study of effect of different cooling rates on the microstructure and measurement of hardness of ferrous
metal plates.

Equipment and apparatus

• Ferrous metal plates (five specimen)
• Furnatrol II Temperature controller Type 53700 (apply heat to austenizing temperature)
• Vickers/Rockwell Hardness tester (to conduct hardness testing)
• Optical microscope (microstructure examination)

Data that are provided

• Table of hardness values of specimens
• Specimen macro images
• Specimen microstructure images

Experimental Procedure

(1) Heating
• Keep four cold rolled steel plates in a Furnatrol II Temperature controller. Austenitize these
steel specimens at 900oC for 1 hour. Allow adequate time for the furnace to heat. One hour of
heating time should be adequate to allow roughly 45-50 minutes of soaking.

(2) Cooling
• Normalizing - Rapidly remove one specimen and allow it to cool in air on a ceramic base.
• Quench Hardening – Rapidly remove two specimens and quench them in water and oil at
room Temperature.
• Annealing – Allow the specimen to cool in the furnace itself after switching the power to the
furnace off. When the temperature of the furnace drops to between 650 - 600°C, remove the
specimen and quench it in water at room temperature, or allow the furnace to cool down slowly
to room temperature and remove the specimen afterwards.
 • Control – One specimen does not undergo heat treatment or quenching. There is no
microstructure or hardness change in this one specimen.

Requirements for Discussion

1. Using a low carbon steel TTT and/or CCT diagram, discuss the expected microstructures and
properties for each of the specimens based on the cooling sequences applied in the experimental
procedures above.

2. Discuss the relationship between heat treatment and the resulting hardness values obtained in
this experiment.

3. For each microstructure that you obtained, discuss the relationship between the microstructure
and how do they affect the mechanical properties.
Appendix

Theory of heat treatment and change in microstructure and properties

Conventional heat treatment procedures for producing martensitic steels generally involve continuous
and rapid cooling of an austenitized specimen in some type of quenching medium, such as water, oil, or
air. The properties of a steel that has been quenched and then tempered depends largely on the rate of
cooling and tempering times and temperatures. During the quenching heat treatment, the specimen can
be converted to a variety of microstructures including soft and ductile spheroidite to hard and brittle
martensite. The production of pearlitic and bainitic steels is lower in cost and suffices for most
applications. Martensitic steels must be tempered prior to use due to their extreme brittleness. A range
of heat treatments producing a variety of microstructures and mechanical properties will be
investigated in this experiment beginning with a set of initially equivalent samples of SAE 1040 steel.
Pearlite, Bainite and Martensite will all be produced through variations in the cooling rates of initially
austenized samples.

Annealing

Annealing in general, involves heating to sufficient high temperatures Holding at this temperature &
finally cooling at a very slow rate. The temperature to which steel is heating & holding time are
determined by various factors such as the chemical composition of the steel, size & shape of steel
component & final properties desired. Annealing can form either the final treatment or a preparatory
step for further treatment. The various purposes of this treatment are,

• To relive internal stresses developed during solidification,

machining, forging, rolling or welding etc.
• To improve or restore ductility or toughness
• To enhance machinability.
• To eliminate chemical non-uniformity.
• To refine grain size
• To reduce gaseous content in steel.

Types of Annealing

• Full Annealing
• Isothermal Annealing
• Diffusion Annealing
• Partial Annealing
• Re crystallization Annealing

Normalizing

It is the process of heating steel to about 40 0 - 50 0 c above upper critical temperature (A3) holding for
proper time & then cooling it in air or slightly agitated air to room temperature or air volume. After
normalizing the resultant microstructure should be pearlitic. This is particularly important for some
alloy steels which are air hardened by nature for such steels, cooling in air don’t lead to normalized
structure. Slower cooling rates are read since the temperature involved in this process is more than that
for normalizing, the homogeneity as austenitic increases & it results in better dispersion. Results in
enhanced mechanical properties. The grain size in finer in normalized structure that in annealing grain
size of normalized steel is governed by section thickness. As cooling rates differ considerably from
case to case, there is variation in grain size of normalizing steel over its cross section. Refinement of
grain size is one of the most important objectives of normalizing & it is to be a great extent due to high
temperature involved in these operation are subjected to a great extent. Normalizing treatment is
frequently applied to steel in order to gain refinement, improvement in machinability & enhanced
mechanical properties such as hardness, strength & toughness.