Structural and FEM analysis of heat treatment effects on mild steel

Abstract The objective of this research is to determine the effect of heat treatment on the mechanical properties of mild steel. Annealing, normalizing, and hardening are the most important heat treatment processes often used to improve the mechanical properties of engineering materials. The main reason behind heat treating materials is to determine the mechanical properties such as ductility, hardness, yield strength, tensile strength, and toughness and to improve the machining to make them more versatile. In this experiment, the specimens were first machined according to ASTM standard and then were heat-treated at a certain temperature above the austenitic region and were hardened in both salt solution and tap water. Tensile Test, Rockwell Hardness Test, and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) were performed on the heat-treated specimens to determine the final results. The maximum hardness and tensile strength were obtained in hardening process as compared to annealing and normalizing.