THERMAL PROCESSING OF METAL ALLOYS

Things to Know:
1. Reasons why thermal processing is done.
2. What is austenizing? What is the difference between normalizing, full
annealing and spheroidizing?
3. How cooling rates depend on the size of a metal piece and distance to the
surface?
4. Why cooling rate is related to hardness?
5. What is hardenability and why it depends on alloying?
6. How is hardenability measured?
7. What steps are involved in precipitation hardening (aging)?
8. What is solution hardening?
9. What are the conditions for precipitation hardening?
10. What is overaging?
A. Annealing Processes
I. Introduction
Annealing is a heat treatment where the material is taken to a high temperature,
kept there for some time and then cooled. High temperatures allow diffusion processes to
occur fast. The time at the high temperature (soaking time) is long enough to allow the
desired transformation to occur. Cooling is done slowly to avoid the distortion (warping)
of the metal piece, or even cracking, caused by stresses induced by differential
contraction due to thermal inhomogeneities.
Benefits of annealing are:
relieve stresses
increase softness, ductility and toughness
produce a specific microstructure
Objectives of Heat Treatments
Heat Treatment is the controlled heating and cooling of metals to alter their
physical and mechanical properties without changing the product shape. Heat treatment
is sometimes done inadvertently due to manufacturing processes that either heat or cool
the metal such as welding or forming.

Heat Treatment is often associated with increasing the strength of material,

but it can also be used to alter certain manufacturability objectives such as
improve machining, improve formability, restore ductility after a cold working

operation. Thus it is a very enabling manufacturing process that can not only help
other manufacturing process, but can also improve product performance by
increasing strength or other desirable characteristics.
Steels are particularly suitable for heat treatment, since they respond well to
heat treatment and the commercial use of steels exceeds that of any other material.
Steels are heat treated for one of the following reasons:
1. Softening
2. Hardening
3. Material Modification
Common Heat Treatments
1. Softening: Softening is done to reduce strength or hardness, remove residual
stresses, improve toughnesss, restore ductility, refine grain size or change the
electromagnetic properties of the steel.
Restoring ductility or removing residual stresses is a necessary
operation when a large amount of cold working is to be performed, such as in
a cold-rolling operation or wiredrawing. Annealing full Process,
spheroidizing, normalizing and tempering austempering, martempering are
the principal ways by which steel is softened.
2. Hardening: Hardening of steels is done to increase the strength and wear
properties. One of the pre-requisites for hardening is sufficient carbon and
alloy content. If there is sufficient Carbon content then the steel can be
directly hardened. Otherwise the surface of the part has to be Carbon enriched
using some diffusion treatment hardening techniques.
3. Material Modification: Heat treatment is used to modify properties of
materials in addition to hardening and softening. These processes modify the
behavior of the steels in a beneficial manner to maximize service life, e.g.,
stress relieving, or strength properties, e.g., cryogenic treatment, or some other
desirable properties, e.g., spring aging.
II. Process Annealing
Deforming a piece that has been strengthened by cold working requires a lot of
energy. Reverting the effect of cold work by process annealing eases further
deformation. Heating allows recovery and recrystallization but is usually limited to avoid
excessive grain growth and oxidation.
III. Stress Relief

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Stresses resulting from machining operations of non-uniform cooling can be
eliminated by stress relief annealing at moderately low temperatures, such that the effect
of cold working and other heat treatments is maintained.
IV. Annealing of Ferrous Alloys
Normalizing (or austenitizing) consists in taking the Fe-C alloy to the austenitic
phase which makes the grain size more uniform, followed by cooling in air. Full anneal
involves taking hypoeutectoid alloys to the austenite phase and hypereutectoid alloys
over the eutectoid temperature to soften pieces which have been hardened by plastic
deformation, and which need to be machined. Spheroidizing consists in prolonged
heating just below the eutectoid temperature. This achieves maximum softness that
minimizes the energy needed in subsequent forming operations.
B. Heat Treatment of Steels
V. Hardenability
To achieve a full conversion of austenite into hard martensite, cooling needs to be
fast enough to avoid partial conversion into perlite or bainite. If the piece is thick, the
interior may cool too slowly so that full martensitic conversion is not achieved. Thus, the
martensitic content, and the hardness, will drop from a high value at the surface to a
lower value in the interior of the piece. Hardenability is the ability of the material to be
hardened by forming martensite.
Hardenability is measured by the Jominy end-quench test. Hardenability is then
given as the dependence of hardness on distance from the quenched end. High
hardenability means that the hardness curve is relatively flat.
VI. Influence of Quenching Medium, Specimen Size, and Geometry
The cooling rate depends on the cooling medium. Cooling is fastest using water,
then oil, and then air. Fast cooling brings the danger of warping and formation of cracks,
since it is usually accompanied by large thermal gradients.
The shape and size of the piece, together with the heat capacity and heat
conductivity are important in determining the cooling rate for different parts of the metal
piece. Heat capacity is the energy content of a heated mass, which needs to be removed
for cooling. Heat conductivity measures how fast this energy is transported to the colder
regions of the piece.

C. Precipitation Hardening

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Hardening can be enhanced by extremely small precipitates that hinder
dislocation motion. The precipitates form when the solubility limit is exceeded.
Precipitation hardening is also called age hardening because it involves the hardening of
the material over a prolonged time.
VII. Heat Treatments
Precipitation hardening is achieved by:
a. solution heat treatment where all the solute atoms are dissolved to form a
single-phase solution.
b. rapid cooling across the solvus line to exceed the solubility limit. This leads to
a supersaturated solid solution that remains stable (metastable) due to the
low temperatures, which prevent diffusion.
c. precipitation heat treatment where the supersaturated solution is heated to an
intermediate temperature to induce precipitation and kept there for some time
(aging).
If the process is continued for a very long time, eventually the hardness
decreases. This is called overaging.
The requirements for precipitation hardening are:
appreciable maximum solubility
solubility curve that falls fast with temperature
composition of the alloy that is less than the maximum solubility
VII. Mechanism of Hardening
Strengthening involves the formation of a large number of microscopic nuclei,
called zones. It is accelerated at high temperatures. Hardening occurs because the
deformation of the lattice around the precipitates hinder slip. Aging that occurs at room
temperature is called natural aging, to distinguish from the artificial aging caused by
premeditated heating.
IX. Miscellaneous Considerations
Since forming, machining, etc. uses more energy when the material is hard, the
steps in the processing of alloys are usually:
solution heat treat and quench
do needed cold working before hardening
do precipitation hardening
Exposure of precipitation-hardened alloys to high temperatures may lead to loss
of strength by overaging.

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Terms:
1. Annealing
2. Artificial aging
3. Austenitizing
4. Full annealing
5. Hardenability
6. Jominy end-quench test
7. Overaging
8. Natural aging
9. Precipitation hardening
10. Precipitation heat treatment
11. Process annealing
12. Solution heat treatment
13. Spheroidizing
14. Stress relief
http://www.virginia.edu/bohr/mse209/class.htm
http://www.efunda.com/processes/heat_treat/introduction/heat_treatments.cfm#Softening