Short Answer Questions

Unit IV

1) Explain process of full annealing.

Ans) Annealing: Heating the steel to a predetermined temperature and holding for a prolonged
time and then cooling it very slowly.

 There are five types of annealing process.

 Full annealing:
i. Heating: Heating the hypo-eutectoid steel to 30-50c above A3 & above A1 for
hypo eutectoid steel.
ii. Soaking: Holding for a long time.
iii. Cooling: Very slow cooling (furnace cooling).

 Purpose:
I. To reduce softness in the material.
II. To relieve internal stresses.
III. To improve machinability of hypo-eutectoid steel.
IV. To improve electric and magnetic properties.

2) Spherodise annealing is not suitable for hypo eutectoid steels. State the reasons.

Ans) Spherodisal annealing is not suitable for hypo eutectoid steel because, after spherodising
the pearlite will become too soft and the hypo-eutectoid steel which is already having ‘alpha’.
which is soft will become too soft that instead of being cut it sticks to cutting tool. Hence
spherodising is not suitable for hypo eutectoid steel.

3) Explain the process of hardening.

Ans) Process:

i. Heating hypo eutectoid steel 30-50 0C above A3 annealing.

ii. Holding at this temperature for sufficient time.
iii. Rapid cooling (oil/brine solution/quenching in water).
 Purpose:
i. To increase hardening.
ii. To increase wear resistance.
iii. To improve magnetic properties.

4) What is quenching? List out various types of quenching media used in hardening.

1) During heat treatment process, after heating and soaking the components are cooled
suddenly. This sudden cooling process is called quenching.
2) The components can be quenched in different media’s i.e., cold water, warm water, brine
solutions, air.
(Q5). Hardening is not the final heat treatment process for steels. State the reason.

The steel is heated at upper critical temperature and plunged into water to cool it an extremely
hard,needle-shaped structure known as “martensite” is formed.In other word, sudden quenching
of steel greatly increases it’s hardness

After hardening, steels must be tempered to,

(1) Reduce the brittleness.

(2) Relive the internal stresses.
(3) Obtain pre-determined mechanical properties.

(Q6) Explain Normalizing heat treatment process.

Normalizing is frequently applied as a final heat treatment process to products which are
subjected to relatively high stresses. This process consists of heating the steel to 40 C to 80 C
above its upper critical temperature, holding at that temperature for a short duration and
subsequently cooling in still air at room temperature. This is also known as Air Quenching
Q7. Write the difference between Annealing and Normalizing

Annealing

Process of annealing is employed to improve softness and ductility in steels or metals

It takes longer time

Cooling is done in furnance itself, so it is low.

The quality of machined surface of annealed steels is low

Grain structure is coarse

Normalizing

Process of normalizing is employed to refine grains structure of steels.

It does not take much time

Cooling is done in still air

The quality of machined surface of normalized steel is high.

Grain structure is finer.

Q8 What are carburizing? List out different types of carburizing process.

Enriching the outerf surface of steel with carbon deoending upon the medium is known as
Carburizing

Carburizing are of three types:-

(1) Pack carburizing

(2) Liquid carburizing
(3) Gas carburizing