Trainings in heat treatment
Heat treatment – a method that involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme temperatures, to achieve a desired result such as hardening or softening of a material. The purpose of heat treatment operations is, for instance, change of the mechanical and plastic properties through the alteration of structure. Those operations are also performed using additional factors, such as mechanical or chemical processing.
Types of heat treatment:
- Hardening – a metallurgical and metalworking process used to increase the hardness of a metal. The hardness of a metal is achieved by heating a given material to the right temperature, known as hardening temperature, withstanding this temperature for the amount of time needed to rebuild the internal structure of the material (mostly phase transitions) and then fast cooling of the material. This procedure results in the formation of local stress concentrations causing the increase of mechanical properties: hardness, strength, yield strength, elastic limit and wear resistance at the expense of the increase of fragility, decrease of plasticity and extension.
- Annealing – is a heat treatment that alters a material to increase its ductility and to make it more workable. It involves heating a material to above its critical temperature, maintaining a suitable temperature, and then cooling. Annealing can induce ductility, soften material, relieve internal stresses, refine the structure by making it homogeneous, and improve cold working properties.
Objectives:
- Learning the methods of heat treatment
- Knowledge of the processes occurring in the material during heat treating and their influence on the material properties
- Acquiring the skills of designing heat treatment processes