Metallurgy Essay

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Introduction
Metallurgy is the field of materials science and material engineering that studies the physical and chemical behaviour of metallic elements, their microstructure compounds and their mixtures, which are mostly known as alloy. Metallurgy can be refers as the technology of metals where science is applied to the production of metals, and the engineering of metal components for the uses of products for consumers and manufacturers.

Metals are widely use in industrial, economic growth and most importantly our daily life. Metals can be found in our car (steel), cell phones (gold, tin), computers (mercury, lithium), electrical wires (copper) and soda can (aluminium). But what is the prime factor that really determines the quality of metals? I would say TOUGHNESS.

Toughness is the ability of a metal to mutilate plastically and to absorb energy in the process before it breaks or fracture. Metals can be heat treated to alter the properties of strength, ductility, toughness, hardness or resistance to corrosion. This can be done by using heat treatment processes which include precipitation strengthening, quenching, annealing and tempering. Annealing and tempering are the most prominent methods for treating metals. A material may become more or less brittle, harder or softer, or stronger or weaker, depending on the treatment used.

Content
HEAT -TREATMENT
Heat treatment is a process using the controlled application of heat to change the physical and chemical properties of a material, and is commonly used in metals. However, materials such as glasses can also be heat treated despite metals only.

Annealing
Annealing and tempering are not the same types of heat treatment. Annealing can be defined as heating the steel to aus...

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...oves mach-inability and perfect grain size. Their main purpose is to make further processing operations easier or possible. Bainite, pearlite and ferrite formed through annealing.
In the other hand, the Hardening processes consist of quenching and tempering. They help in developing the appropriate bulk and surface properties. Martensite can be found in the structure of hardened or quenched steel. Martensite is a hard but brittle structure which needs tempering. After tempering, the toughness is increased and the brittleness is reduced, then it will have broad use throughout engineering field. Their principal use is to render the part fit for final use.
In summary, the rate of cooling from the austenite phase is the main determinant of final structure and properties.
To look it in a simple way, annealing is softening while tempering is hardening.

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