Français
3. Income
Applied to alloyed or unalloyed carbon steels after martensitic and/or martensitic-bainitic hardening, tempering (cf. ) is designed to precipitate carbon in a controlled form and under controlled conditions in order to achieve optimum hardening. This operation generates a structural evolution from the metastable state obtained after quenching to a state closer to physico-chemical equilibrium.
Eventually, this tempering may cause residual austenite to transform into bainite during holding, or into secondary martensite during final cooling.
As a special case, we consider the tempering of iron alloys containing alloying elements (other than carbon) preserved in supersaturated solid solution by quenching after they have been dissolved at high temperature. This case will be dealt...
The Ultimate Scientific and Technical Reference
This article is included in
Metal treatments
This offer includes:
Knowledge Base
Updated and enriched with articles validated by our scientific committees
Services
A set of exclusive tools to complement the resources
Practical Path
Operational and didactic, to guarantee the acquisition of transversal skills
Doc & Quiz
Interactive articles with quizzes, for constructive reading
Income
Predicting steel response to quenching followed by tempering
