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Steel Production: Heat Treatment

The document discusses the process of heat treating steel. It describes three main heat treating processes: annealing, quenching, and tempering. Annealing relieves internal stresses by heating steel to allow relaxation. Quenching involves heating steel to form austenite and then rapidly cooling to form a hard martensitic structure. Tempering then reduces brittleness by partially transforming martensite to reduce stresses and defects. The document provides context on steel production and the goal of adjusting the carbon content when smelting iron ore to produce steel.

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66 views1 page

Steel Production: Heat Treatment

The document discusses the process of heat treating steel. It describes three main heat treating processes: annealing, quenching, and tempering. Annealing relieves internal stresses by heating steel to allow relaxation. Quenching involves heating steel to form austenite and then rapidly cooling to form a hard martensitic structure. Tempering then reduces brittleness by partially transforming martensite to reduce stresses and defects. The document provides context on steel production and the goal of adjusting the carbon content when smelting iron ore to produce steel.

Uploaded by

A-Reader
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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iron and is exceedingly hard but brittle.

Depending on the carbon content, the martensitic phase


takes different forms. Below 0.2% carbon, it takes on a ferrite BCC crystal form, but at higher carbon
content it takes a body-centered tetragonal (BCT) structure. There is no thermal activation energy for
the transformation from austenite to martensite.[clarification needed] Moreover, there is no compositional
change so the atoms generally retain their same neighbors.[9]
Martensite has a lower density (it expands during the cooling) than does austenite, so that the
transformation between them results in a change of volume. In this case, expansion occurs. Internal
stresses from this expansion generally take the form of compression on the crystals of martensite
and tension on the remaining ferrite, with a fair amount of shear on both constituents. If quenching is
done improperly, the internal stresses can cause a part to shatter as it cools. At the very least, they
cause internal work hardening and other microscopic imperfections. It is common for quench cracks
to form when steel is water quenched, although they may not always be visible.[10]

Heat treatment[edit]
Main article: Heat treating
There are many types of heat treating processes available to steel. The most common
are annealing, quenching, and tempering. Heat treatment is effective on compositions above the
eutectoid composition (hypereutectoid) of 0.8% carbon. Hypoeutectoid steel does not benefit from
heat treatment.
Annealing is the process of heating the steel to a sufficiently high temperature to relieve local
internal stresses. It does not create a general softening of the product but only locally relieves strains
and stresses locked up within the material. Annealing goes through three
phases: recovery, recrystallization, and grain growth. The temperature required to anneal a
particular steel depends on the type of annealing to be achieved and the alloying constituents.[11]
Quenching involves heating the steel to create the austenite phase then quenching it in water or oil.
This rapid cooling results in a hard but brittle martensitic structure.[9] The steel is then tempered,
which is just a specialized type of annealing, to reduce brittleness. In this application the annealing
(tempering) process transforms some of the martensite into cementite, or spheroidite and hence it
reduces the internal stresses and defects. The result is a more ductile and fracture-resistant steel.[12]

Steel production[edit]
Main article: Steelmaking
See also: List of countries by steel production

Iron ore pellets for the production of steel

When iron is smelted from its ore, it contains more carbon than is desirable. To become steel, it
must be reprocessed to reduce the carbon to the correct amount, at which point other elements can
be added. In the past, steel facilities would cast the raw steel product into ingots which would be
stored until use in further refinement processes that resulted in the finished product. In modern
facilities, the initial product is close to the final composition and is continuously cast into long slabs,

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