Shashank Agarwal 10003016 (GROUP 5 4/1/12

Rockwell Hardness Test

Objective :
To observe hardness relations among given material samples by determining their Rockwell hardness values.

Specimen and apparatus Used :

1. Rockwell hardness testing machine. 2. Cubical samples of Aluminium, Brass, Mild Steel and Stainless Steel.

Procedure :
The experiment uses a Rockwell harness testing machine which is a quick, simple, least damaging and most reliable way of measuring the hardness of a material. The experiment starts with switching on the machine power supplies. The switch on the front panel is used to adjusted to ball/cone indenter and sidewise switch is used to adjust the load to 50/100/150 kgf. Combinational selection of indenter and load decides the standard in which we will get HR value. In our experiment we have used Diamond ball indenter of 1/16 diameter and 100-kgf resulting in obtaining HRB value on the display. After above procedure the machine is ready to check value of the hardness of the sample. So the specimen is placed on the test table. The hand-wheel attached to the lower part of anvil is rotated clockwise slowly and smoothly resulting in upward movement of the specimen till it just touches the indenter, at this point we observe | on right most corner of the display . The pre-load is than applied on the specimen by further rotating the hand-wheel very gently and slowly until the display shows the correct preload as - - -| indicated by a bleep at this point rotation of the hand-wheel is stopped. The rest of the loading cycle is automatic which include application and removal of the additional load displayed by a rotation of the right-hand digit in the display. The

full load is applied for a few seconds by the machine. At the end of the load cycle, the hardness number is be displayed yed on the display display.

Apparatus sketch:

Digital Rockwell Tester

Made in Autodesk Inventor

Observations and calculations:

Material Tested Aluminium Brass Mild Steel Stainless Steel Standard Used ASTM E18-08b *HRB => H- Hardness R- Rockwell HRB Value obtained 49.6 69.8 80.6 88.5 B- Steel ball 1/16 , 100-kgf

Results:
From the values of the HRB obtained we obtained that arrangement of sample in order of increasing hardness is: Aluminium < Brass < Mild Steel < Stainless Steel

Discussion:
Procedure: 1. Wheel rotation should be slow and uniform to avoid any impact force and avoiding any dent before that formed by machine. 2. Indent should be made away from other dents (by atleast twice the diameter of indenter) so that the stain-hardening in nearby regions to preexisting dents may not cause error in the reading. 3.Machine uses vertical movement value of indenter , standard values & formulae already stored in the memory and the load value to give HRB value. Result: As the formula for obtaining value of HRB is: HRB = h-500t where h=130 for HRB testing, HRB value is inversely proportional to thickness of indent (t) which in turn inversely proportional to hardness of material . Hence more the value of HRB obtained more will the hardness of the material.