7-Hardenabilityofsteel.pdfVIP

EXPERIMENT 7 HARDENABILITY OF STEELS Purpose This experiment is aimed at understanding the effect of cooling rate on the hardness of two steels. The experiment also shows why adding alloying elements other than carbon enables a part to be heat-treated more uniformly and to a greater depth. Background The background for Experiment #6 describes why the rate of cooling affects hardness but it does not explain why some parts that are heat-treated do not reach a high hardness. This problem, which is very real, is not well understood by the average engineer. In a practical sense it is not possible to heat-treat all parts to the same degree. The difference is due to the thickness or volume effect. Basically, when a part is quenched in water or some other fluid, the heat must be conducted out through the surface. This leads to a temperature gradient dt/dx between the surface and the center of the part being heat-treated. The temperature gradient varies with time. The temperature gradient is less steep between the center and the edge at later times. Therefore, the temperature of the center lags in time behind the temperature of the surface. If we were to plot a time profile of the center and the edge temperatures as shown in Figure 7-1, the time to reach a given temperature T2 is definitely longer in the center than at the edge. This means that cooling rate varies as a function of depth. The greater the depth the slower the cooling rate. The situation with respect to the cooling rate can lead to a different hardness in the center than at the edge. The edge could transform to martensite and the center to pearlite or bainite. In selecting a steel, the ability to cool the center depends upon the thickness of the part. The thicker the part, the slower the cooling rate at the center. For a given thickness, on