Quenching is a heat treatment process. Quenching of steel is a heat treatment process in which the steel is heated to a temperature above the critical temperature Ac3 (hypoeutectoid steel) or Ac1 (hypereutectoid steel), kept warm for a period of time, so that it is fully or partially austenitized, and then rapidly cooled to below Ms (or isothermally near Ms) at a cooling rate greater than the critical cooling rate for martensite (or bainite) transformation. The solid solution treatment or heat treatment process with rapid cooling process of materials such as aluminum alloys, copper alloys, titanium alloys, and tempered glass is usually called quenching.
The purpose of quenching is to transform supercooled austenite into martensite or bainite structure, which can be combined with various tempering processes to make the steel have good plasticity and toughness while having high strength and hardness. Then tempering is used to improve the rigidity, hardness, wear resistance, fatigue strength and toughness of the steel to meet the use requirements of different mechanical parts and tools. In addition, quenching can also improve the physical or chemical properties of some special steels, such as enhancing the ferromagnetism of magnetic steel and improving the corrosion resistance of stainless steel.
Small diameter seamless steel pipe
