INFLUENCE THE QUENCHING AND TEMPERING ON THE MICROSTRUCTURE, MECHANICAL PROPERTIES AND SURFACE ROUGHNESS, OF MEDIUM CARBON STEEL

Abstract

One of ways to improve properties of materials without changing the product shape toobtain the desired engineering applications is heating and cooling under effect of controlledsequence of heat treatment. The main aim of this study was to investigate the effect ofheating and cooling on the surface roughness, microstructure and some selected propertiessuch as the hardness and impact strength of Medium Carbon Steel which treated at differenttypes of heat treatment processes. Heat treatment achieved in this work was respectively,heating, quenching and tempering. The specimens were heated to 850°C and left for 45minutes inside the furnace as a holding time at that temperature, then quenching process wasperformed in four types of quenching media (still air, cold water (2°C), oil and polymersolution), respectively. Thereafter, the samples were tempered at 200°C, 400°C, and 600°Cwith one hour as a soaking time for each temperature, then were all cooled by still air. Whenthe heat treatment process was completed, the surface roughness, hardness, impact strengthand microstructure tests were performed. The results showed a change and clearimprovement of surface roughness, mechanical properties and microstructure afterquenching was achieved, as well as the change that took place due to the increasingtoughness and ductility by reducing of brittleness of samples.