Heat Treatment of

Steels and Cast Irons

Carbon steels
Stainless steels
Austenit
e
stainless
steel

Ferritic
stainless
steel

Duplex
stainless
steel

Martensit
e stainless
steel
Cast Irons
 Critical temperature
A1The temperature at which
transformation of austenite to
ferrite or to ferrite and cementite is
completed during cooling.
A2is called the Curie temperature
of ferrite (768⁰C), where
ferromagnetic ferrite on heating
changes to paramagnetic.
A3 The temperature at which
austenite begins to transform to
ferrite during cooling (in a
hypoeutectoid steel).
A4—The temperature at which
delta ferrite transforms to austenite
during cooling (in a
hypoeutectoid steel).
 Definition of Heat treatment
Heat treating is defined as ‘a process in which the entire
object, or a portion thereof, is intentionally submitted to
thermal cycles and, if required, to chemical and additional
physical actions, in order to achieve desired (change in the)
structures and properties’
-International Federation for Heat Treating and Surface Engineering
Why is steel heat treated?

 control the microstructure,

 increase the strength and
toughness,
 release residual stresses and
 prevent cracking
 control hardness (and softening)
 improve machinability
 Improve mechanical
Electrochemical and tribological
 Annealing
Annealing is a heat treatment
method in which an material
is exposed to an elevated
temperature for an certain
period of time and slowly
cooled.

Heating to the desired Holding or soaking at a pre-

determined temperature Cooling to room
temperature
temperature, usually
inside the furnace
 Annealing Stages:

Annealing furnace consists of three stages; recovery, recrystallization, and grain

growth. The recovery phase occurs at a lower temperature of the process. This is
where the material being annealed is softened by the removal of linear defects called
dislocations and the internal stresses produced by them.

The recrystallization step is where new stress-free grains nucleate and grow to
replace those that were removed in the recovery state. Grain growth occurs only once
recrystallization has ended & if annealing is allowed to continues.

During grain growth, the microstructures of the material begin to coarsen, and the
material may lose some strength, so further heat treatment will be required.
 Annealing
A variety of annealing heat treatment are possible they are characterized
by the induced changes which are often microstructural and are responsible
for the alteration of the mechanical properties

Annealing

Spherodizing Diffusion
full annealing Normalization Stress relieving
annealing Annealing
 FULL ANNEALING

Used on low and medium carbon that

will be machined or will experience

extensive plastic deformation.

hypoeutectoid alloys the alloy is heated

to a temperature of about 50℃ above
the A3 line for hypoeutectoid alloys

For hypereutectoid alloys the alloy is

heated 50℃ above the A1 line
 FULL ANNEALING

• The alloy is cooled in the furnace i.e.

the furnace is turned off and the steel
and the furnace cool to room
temperature.
• The microstructural product of this
anneal is coarse pearlite in addition to
any proeutectoid phase that is relatively
soft and ductile.
 SPHEROIDISING (SOFT ANNEALING)
applicable to steels which have more
than 0.8% carbon (medium to high
steels) which are too hard to machine
or plastic deform

heating of steel just below the lower

critical temperature (A1). In the simplest

case, the steel is heated to just below A 1

and held for a prolonged period.
 SPHEROIDISING (SOFT ANNEALING

steel remains in the ferrite plus

cementite two-phase field, no phase
transformations occur.
However, Instead of lamellar
morphology, the resulting
microstructure consists of ferrite plus
fine spheroidal and/or globular
cementite (with the cementite
morphology depending in part upon
the carbon content of the steel).
SPHEROIDISING MICROSTRUCTURE
 DIFFUSION (HOMOGENISING)
ANNEALING

Diffusion annealing (homogenising) is

performed on steel ingots and castings
to minimise chemical segregation.
The presence of these defects produces
increased brittleness and reduced
ductility and toughness. The
homogenisation process, is conducted
by heating the steel rapidly to 1100–
1200◦C and holding for 8 to 16 hours.
The steel is then furnace cooled to 800–
850◦C and subsequently cooled to room
temperature in still air.
 Microstructure
evolution during
homogenization
Microstructure evolution during
homogenization at 580 • C,
X1000, 0.5% HF reagent, etching
time 5 s, bright field: (a) as-cast,
(b) 40 min, (c) 2 h, (d) 4 h, (e) 8 h
and (f) 10 h. boundaries, (b)
removal of microsegregation, (c)
precipitation inside the grains and
(d) phase dissolution. Bulk
diffusion or
 NORMALISING

The aim of normalizing is to achieve a

uniform homogeneous microstructure
with reproducible properties.
For normalising, hypoeutectoid steels
are heated to a somewhat higher
temperature (40–50◦C above the A3)
than that used for full annealing.
Hypereutectoid steels are heated above
the Acm temperature . The holding time
depends on the size of the part..
The minimum time is 15
minutes at temperature, with
longer times being employed
for larger parts, to ensure that
the part is completely
austenitised. On completion
of the required holding time,
specified by the size of the
part, the part is cooled in still
air. For a hypoeutectoid steel,
the result will be a fine ferrite
plus pearlite microstructure
 STRESS RELIEVING

Stress relieving is used typically to remove residual stresses which have

accumulated from prior manufacturing processes i.e. welding,
solidification, grinding, machining.
 STRESS RELIEVING
• Residual stresses are those stresses that remain in an object (in particular, in
a welded component) even in the absence of external loading or thermal
gradient
• Internal residual stress may develop in metal pieces in response to the
following
1. Plastic deformation such as machining and grinding
2. Non uniform cooling of pieces that have been manufactured at
elevated temperatures
3. Phase transformations that is induced upon cooling in which parent
and product phase have different densities
 STRESS RELIEVING
• performed by heating to a
temperature below A1 (for ferritic
steels) and holding at that
temperature for the required time,
• The steel is then cooled
sufficiently slowly to avoid the
formation of excessive thermal
stresses.
• No phase transformations occur
during stress relief processing
 Quenching

Quenching is heat treatment by cooling from the austenitizing temperature which

is commonly selected at a temperature that dissolves the carbides.To provide a
required cooling rate during quenching, various cooling media and methods are
employed. Water, oil, or air can serve as the cooling medium. Many alloyed
steels, which are characterized by a high stability of austenite, are subjected to
step quenching.
Quenching
 Tempering

• Tempering is a process of heat treating, which is used to increase the

toughness of iron-based alloys. Tempering is usually performed after
hardening, to reduce some of the excess hardness, and is done by
heating the metal to some temperature below the critical point for a
certain period of time, then allowing it to cool in still air
 Martensite

• body-centered tetragonal form of

iron in which some carbon is
dissolved.
• forms during quenching, when the
face centered cubic lattice of
austenite
• very hard and very brittle;
• Needle like structure
 Bainite

• Bainite forms by the

decomposition of austenite at a
temperature which is above MS but
below that at which fine pearlite
form.
• Forms needle or plates depending
on the temperature of
transformation