Heat Treatment of Carbon and Alloy Steels

The process of heat treating metals and metal alloys is simply heating and/or cooling a solid metal or alloy in a way designed to produce specific conditions and/or properties. Heat treatment of carbon and alloy steels is crucial in today’s industrial world because of the range of desirable mechanical properties that may be obtained and the importance of steel in every realm of modern life. In this self-guided digital course on “Heat Treatment of Carbon and Alloy Steels”, students will learn – with the help of rich visuals, narrated animations, demonstration videos, and interactive quizzes – the various heat treatment processes involved in modulation properties of steel, effect of carbon on the phases of iron and how it affects the microstructure, classification of steel and tempering of steel. The course also includes information on hardness and hardenability of iron, Jominy end-quench test for measuring hardenability and different types of furnaces used in commercial heat treating processes.

Target Audience 

• Design Engineers
• Operators
• Technicians
• Process Engineers
• QA Managers
• Product Development Specialists
• Sales and Purchasing Professionals

Learning Objectives

• Describe the austenite transformation processes
• List the primary quenching media and their applications
• Explain tempering
• Classify heat treating furnaces by heat transfer media
• Outline the procedure for the Jominy end-quench test for harden­ability

Course Outline

• The Allotropy of Iron
• Carbon Effects on the Phases of Iron
• The Iron- Cementite Phase Diagram
• Transformation of Austenite
• Heating and Cooling
• Classification of Steels
• Nonhardening Heat Treatments
• Hardening of Steel
• Continuous Cooling Transformations
• Hardness and Hardenability
• Quenching
• Tempering of Steel
• Furnaces

Special Instructions

Course Length- 1.5-2hrs

Access details- The course will be available for viewing for 60 days from the registration date.

Reference materials included- pdf of the lesson

Communication: Access to course materials requires a unique email address for the student enrolled. All communications concerning the status of the class will be accomplished by email. It is the responsibility of the class registrant to ensure that a valid email address has been supplied and email filter settings are not preventing delivery of emails from ASM International-email.