5.5.4 Heat Treatment of Structural Low Alloy and Quenched and Tempered Steel
Steel plates are always hot rolled in
the still mills. Earlier it was
mentioned that besides the hot
rolled condition, the steels may be
provided with a heat treatment after
normalizing or quenching. Various
heat treatments are illustrated in
Figure 5.15.
In both of these heat treatments, the
steel is first heated to a temperature
where the normal ferrite and pearlite
phases, present at room
temperature, change back to the
austenite phase (FCC structure).
This temperature for structural
steels is typically about 900°C and
this part of the heat treatment is
called austenitizing.
If the steel is now taken out from the
furnace and allowed to cool in the
air, then it is said to have been
normalized. For structural steels, the microstructure of the normalized steels is generally similar to that
of the hot rolled steel (ferrite and pearlite) except that, due to the presence of such elements as
aluminum, vanadium, etc., the grain size of the normalized steel is smaller than that of the hot rolled
steel. Smaller grain size increases the strength and low-temperature toughness of the steel.
If instead, the steel is taken out of the furnace and immediately immersed in cold water, the steel is
said to have been quenched. The objective here is to obtain a hard, strong martensitic structure.
Since this structure also makes the steel brittle, the quenched steel is always tempered, by putting the
steel back into a furnace at about 550°C to 650°C. The tempering temperature has to be less than
723°C to prevent transformation to austenite. If austenite begins to form again the effect of quenching
and tempering will be lost.
During fabrication the steel temperature should not exceed the temperature at which the
steelmaker tempered the steel since this will lead to a lower steel strength, possibly below the
minimum specified requirements.