ANNEALING-:

Annealing is defined as heating the steel to austenite region and then cooling
slowly in transformation range. Slow cooling is carried out in the furnace (by switching
of the supply furnace) or in any good heat insulating materials.
Following are the purposes of annealing:
To relieve internal stresses induced in fabrication processes;
To reduce strain hardening effect of cold working. This increases ductility;
To improve machinability;
To make the steel suitable for further cold working;
To alter the micro-structure to improve properties of steel;
To improve homogeneity of the material;
To make the steel suitable for further heat treatment; and
To improve electrical and magnetic properties.

Annealing temperatures and soaking time-:

Steel
Hypoeutectoid
Hypereutectoid

Annealing temperature
AC3+500C
AC1+500C

Usually, the section up to 25mm thick is soaked for one hour. For heavy sections,
the time is increased at a rate of 30-40minutes/ additional 25mm thickness. Longer holding time
generally reduced the hardness of steel.
Hypereutectoid steels are never annealed from the above ACm line becauseo Slow cooling from ACm developes undesirable micro-structure as a network of
cementite along pearlite grain boundaries; and
o Grain coarsening, oxidation and decarburization may occur.
As annealed, hypoeutectoid steel shows small grains of proeutectoid ferrite and
coarse lamellar pearlite.
Annealing should never be a final heat treatment for hypereutectoid steel as it
gives thick, hard and detail grain boundary (of cementite network) which results
in less machinability.

Types Of Annealing-:
Full Annealing: It consists of heating the steel to austenite region is then cooling
it very slowly (the details are explained under annealing).

 Bright Annealing: This is an annealing process carried out in a protective

atmosphere. It prevents discoloration of steel it gives bright surface and hence
termed as bright annealing. Argon, nitrogen or reducing atmosphere is used.
Usually, a reducing gas contains 15%H2, 10%CO, 5% CO2, 1.5% CH4 and
balance N2.
Box Annealing: For this type of annealing, the components are packed in sealed
container using charcoal or cast iron chips. This reduces oxidation the annealing
procedure is similar to full annealing. It is also know as black annealing.
Stress Relieving: This is used mainly for cold worked steels. It is a low
temperature (about 5000C) annealing. This process is sometimes called as subcritical annealing. It does not affect the strength and hardness of steel. This heat
treatment more useful for low carbon steel which is often cold worked.
Spheroidizing: This heat treatment is used for hypereutectoid steels. This
improves machinability of steel. When the coarse pearlite is too hard and the
carbon content is high, this long time process spheroidies the microstructure. It
gives globules of cementite in ferrite matrix.
Spheroidizing is carried out by
o Hardening followed with high temperature tempering;
o Holding the steel just below the lower critical temperature for long time
and
o Cyclic heating and cooling around A1
Process or Intermediate annealing -: During cold working, steel gets work
hardened and further plastic deformation is not possible. So the material is
intermediately annealed in the process. This helps to increase the ductility of steel.
The cold work steel is heated above its recrystallization temperature. This
produces stress free equiaxed grains. This treatment is useful for wire drawing,
tube drawing and rolling operations.
Recrystallization annealing -: It consists of heating steel below AC1.
Recrystallization of ferrite and spheroidization of cementite occurs. This process
eliminates internal stresses and improves ductility.
Isothermal or Cycle annealing-: The process consists of fast cooling of steel from
austenitising temperature to a constant temperature just below A1. The steel is
held at this temperature until the transformation is completed. Then it is cooled to

room temperature. This is used for medium and high carbon steel as conventional
annealing cycles are no longer for these steels. This treatment produces coarse
pearlite. In general, annealing is recommended for various steel castings, forgings
and rolled products.

Normalizing -: It can be defined as heating the steel to austenite region followed by air
cooling. Following are the purposes of normalizing:
To eliminate coarse grained structure.
To modify dendritic structure.
To reduce segregation.
To obtain required mechanical properties.
To improve machinability.
To produce harder and stronger steel than annealing
To refine grain structure.

Normalizing temperatures and soaking time -:

Normalizing temperature depends on carbon content and soaking time depends on the
mass of the component.

Steel

Normalizing temperature

Hypoeutectoid steel
Hypereutectoid steel

AC3 + 500c
ACm + 500c

Soaking time may be given as 1hr/25mm thickness.

Normalizing produces fine pearlite due to higher cooling rate and the
transformation occurs at lower temperature. The inter-lamellar spacing of pearlite is much
smaller then the pearlite produced by annealing.

Hardening-:

It may be defined as heating the steel to austenite region and quenching it into
suitable medium as water, oil etc. Basically, hardening is carried out to increase hardness,
wear resistance and abrasion resistance.
Rapid cooling or quenching gives martensite (BCT) structure. This highly stressed
structure increases hardness of steel.

Hardening temperatures and soaking time :

Hardening temperatures (fig.4.14) depend upon carbon content, while soaking time
depends upon section thickness.
Steels
Hypoeuctoid steels
Hypereutectoid steels

Hardening Temperature
AC3 + 500C
AC1 + 500C

Recommended soaking time for hardening is 1hour/25 mm section thickness.

Hypoeutectoid steels are not hardened from AC 1 + 500C as hypereutectoid steels, for
the reason that proeutectoid ferrite and austenite are present at this temperature. After quenching,
only austenite transforms to martensite, while ferrite (soft phase) remains untransformed. This
results in lower hardness.
Similarly, hypereutectoid steels are quenched from the region between AC 1 and ACm.
In this region, austenite and proeutectoid cementite are present. After quenching, austenite
transforms to martensite and hard cementite remains unchanged which does not lower the
hardness. On the other hand, of hypoeutectoid steels are quenched from above AC m temperature,
following points are observed:
Grain coarsening occurs at high temperatures.
Oxidation/ decarburization may occur.
Tendency of cracking increases.

The hardness of steel after quenching depends upon the hardness of martensite which
is the function of carbon contain.

Factors affecting hardening:

Lower austenitising temperature results in incomplete transformation and gives less
hardness. Higher austenitising temperature gives rise to grain coarsening. The soaking
time should be know to homogenize austenite. Quenching should be carried out
immediately after heating. It is delayed, other phases form.
Type, agitation, contamination and temperature of quenching medium play and
important role as wrong selection of any this factor may give distortion to steel. Alloying
elements lower the CCR by retarding the transformation. So oil quenching or air cooling
may therefore give martensite structure.