INTRODUCTION of Heat and Surface Treatment

BY Wahyono Suprapto

Major requirements of the spring steel are high yield strength, high proportional limit, and high fatigue strength. These desirable properties of spring can be achieved firstly by a higher carbon content or with suitable alloying elements, and secondly by heat treatment. In harden condition, steel should have 100% martensite to attain maximum yield strength, but it is very brittle too, and thus, as quenched steels are used for very few engineering applications. By tempering process, the properties of quench steel could be modified to decrease hardness and increase ductility and impact strength gradually.

Figure 1.Normalizing, annealing and hardening temperature range for carbon steel

The phase transformation temperature for low alloy steel with less than 0.6% C can be estimated by the following equations(according to 2,3) and using heat treatment cycle for selective alloy is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Heat Treatment Cycle for Spring Steel Treatment

Ac1: Equilibrium Temperature of Austenitization Start [C] Ac3: Equilibrium Temperature for Austenitization End [C] Bs : Start Temperature of the Bainitic Transformation [C] Ms : Start Temperature of the Martensitic Transformation [C] CB : Maximum allowable cooling time to obtain martensite [sec] For hypoeutectoid steels ; Austenitizing temperature= Ac3+ (2040)C For hypereutectoid eutectoid steel ; Austenitizing temperature= Ac1+ (2040)C
[1]. Totten, G. E. 2007. Steel Heat Treatment: Metallurgy and Technologies. NewYork : Taylors & FranciesGroup. [2]. Andrews, K. W. 1965. Empirical Formulae for the Calculation of Some Transformation Temperatures. J. Iron Steel Institute. 203: 721-727.

In low-alloy steels the residual austenite may transform into some form of degenerate pearlite. The secondary transformations have for a long time been known to influence the hardness of the microstructure. Lyman and Troiano (1946) found that for a series of Fe-Cr-C alloys the hardness for the 0.08 wt% C alloy was insentive to the isothermal transformation temperature (Fig. 6). The low carbon concentration ensures that the microstructure is almost fully bainitic for all of the temperatures studied. This constrasts with higher carbon alloys, where tha hardness first decreases as the transformation temperature is reduced; this is because the fraction of bainite increases at the expence of residual phases like martensite and degenerate paerlite.

The final step of this heat treatment cycle is tempering. Tempering is the process of heating the hardened steel to a temperature maximum up to lower critical temperature (A1), soaking at this temperature, and then cooling, normally very slowly. The following four stages define the strength, hardness and toughness required in service application.(4) 1. First stage of tempering: Up to 200C: Precipitation of (epsilon) carbide due to decrease of tetragonality of martensite, 2. Second stage of tempering: 200C to 300C: Decomposition of retained austenite. 3. Third stage of tempering: 200C to 350C: Formation of rod or plates of cementite with complete loss of tetragonality of martensite and dissolution of -carbide. 4. Fourth stage of tempering: 350C to 700C: Coarsening and spheroidisation of cementite along with recovery and recrystallisation of ferrite. Metallographic samples from all heat treatment conditions were prepared and etched in 2% nital in order to reveal the microstructures.

Another method is used for hardenability value from chemical composition and grain size. Grain size calculation method used in this paper is Jefferies Planimetric Test [3]. The resulting ASTM grain size number has been measured from Figure 3 as 6.453 and ideal critical diameter has been calculated as 2.5 inch using data from Figure 24 by composition method [3].

Figure 3. Effect of Section Thickness on the Hardness of the Oil Quenched Process Grain Size of Selective Steel Bar
[3]. Rajan,T. V., Sharma, C.P. and Sharma, A. 1999. Heat Treatment. New Delhi : Prentic-Hall of India Private.

quench agitation system b). Schematic diagram of the quench tank with impeller agitation (X100 mm).

Microstructure of an metals can be defined by the size, amount and distribution of punctual, lineal, superficial and volumetric defects that are present within the material.

Optical metallography, one of three general categories of metallography, entails examination of materials using visible light to provide a magnified image of the micro- and macrostructure. In scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the second category, the surface of the specimen is bombarded with a beam of electrons to provide information for producing an image. Lastly, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) consists of passing a beam of electrons through a very thin specimen and analyzing the transmitted beam for structural information. Microscopy (microstructural examination) involves magnifications of approximately 50x or higher; macroscopy (macrostructural examination), 50 x or lower.

Typical structure property relationships that have been established using optical metallography include: A general increase in yield strength and hardness of a metal with decreasing grain size A general tendency for a decreased ductility with increasing inclusion content Correlations of weld penetration, heat affected zone (HAZ) size, and welddefect density with the nature and character of the welding. Evaluation of such surface treatments as carburizing and induction hardening by determinations of the depth and microstructural characteristics of the hardened region Correlations of fatigue crack growth rates and fracture-toughness parameters with such structural variables as inclusion content and distribution Association of failure initiation sites with microstructural inhomogeneities, such as second-phase particles Correlations of anisotropic mechanical behavior with elongated grains and/or preferred grain orientations

Grain size is characterized by placing a line of known length (or preferably a circle of known circumference) on the magnified image of the microstructure and counting the number of intersections between the line and grain boundaries in the microstructure. The number of intersections, N, can be converted to a measure of grain size, d, using:

Assume that strength of steel microstructures can be factorised into a number of intrinsic components:

where Xi is the concentration of a substitutional solute which is represented here by a subscript i. The other terms in this equation can be listed as follows: KL{L} function for strengthening due to grain size, 115 MN m1 KD coefficient for strengthening due to dislocations, 7.34 106 MN m1 Fe strength of pure, annealed iron, 219 MN m2 at 300 K. SSi substitutional solute (i) strengthening. C solid solution strengthening due to carbon. D dislocation density, typically 1016 m2 L measure of the ferrite plate size, typically 0.2m. Pure bodycentered cubic iron in a fully annealed condition makes an intrinsic (Peierls) contribution Fe which depends on the temperature (T ) and strain rate ( ).

Illustration of a continuous cooling transformation (cct) diagram for steel Below around 700 C (723 C in pure iron) the austenite is thermodynamically unstable and, under equilibrium conditions, it will undergo a eutectoid reaction and form pearlite an interleaved mixture of ferrite and cementite (Fe3C). Boron is alloyed with these steels to provide sufficient hardenability so that, on quenching hot-stamped parts in water-cooled dies, the austenite-to-martensite transformation can occur.

Samples of an AISI type 316L austenitic stainless steel (0.024 C, 16.70 Cr, 12.20 Ni, 2.63 Mo, 1.50 Mn, 0.26 Si, 0.039 N, wt.%) were heated in an electric box furnace at four different temperatures (904oC, 1010oC, 1095oC and 1194oC) for 30 min to obtain different equiaxed grain structures, cooling to room temperature was in water.

The final microstructure of steel can contain different phases (fractions with homogeneous characteristics), many with names ending in ite: austenite, martensite, ferrite, bainite, etc., as shown in Fig. 5. Several factors determine the grain size, shape, and distribution of these phases, which in turn contribute to strength, ductility, and other properties of the material.

Figure 5: Some of the microstructures produced during annealing of hypoeutectoid carbon-steel [16]

Hardenability is the property of steel that governs the depth to which hardening occurs in a section during quenching. Hardenability is of considerable importance because it relates directly to the strength of steel, as well as to many other mechanical properties, notably toughness and fatigue properties.

The ideal critical diameter is calculated from the formula :

Type of

Si

Mn

Cr

Mo

Ni

Di Value

Steel A 0.14 0.32 0.85 0.95 0.24 1.70 Steel B 0.16 0.28 1.00 0.86 0.20 1.30