Heat treatments, with a few exceptions, always involve some phases and/or grain transformations.
Heat treatments may be subdivided into two broad categories:
Conventional Heat Treatments
- annealing
- normalizing
- quenching
- tempering
- stress relieving
Special Heat Treatments
- flame hardening
- hot shots
- case hardening
Since this is a vast subject, we will concentrate on conventional heat treatments. As mentioned
previously, heat treatments, when applied to heat treatable steels, will modify steel properties to
regenerate some properties or to improve existing ones.