Residual stresses are unavoidable in heat treatment and surface engineering and their presence can be advantageous or disastrous for the performance of components. Residual stresses cannot be measured directly, but are determined from strain measurements, either non-destructively from diffraction-based methods, or destructively from relaxation-based methods. In this presentation, three examples of stress determination from strain measurements showcase some of the possibilities. In the first example lattice strains are determined with energy dispersive analysis with synchrotron radiation in relation to the phase fraction during martensite formation in a soft martensitic stainless steel. The second example shows synchrotron lattice determination with energy dispersive analysis during in-situ tensile loading of super martensitic stainless steel containing reverted austenite. The third example concerns determination of residual stresses in internally oxidized bulk metallic glass with laboratory X-ray diffraction analysis of lattice strains and displacements by stress relaxation during incremental ring-core excavation of micron-scale columns with focused ion beam milling in an SEM.

Samples from forged and heat-treated steel products with known quench crack histories have been mapped in order to study a possible relation between banding segregation and quench cracking. The products were medium carbon low alloy steels produced by ingot and continuous casting. EDS X-ray mapping was used to characterize the banding pattern and tensile testing revealed corresponding properties. The experimental procedures are described in the paper along with test results and conclusions.

In industrial applications, hot forging of aluminum alloy AA 6082 is carried out at 480 °C following a preheating process in an induction heater. The forged parts are then cooled down to room temperature, heated up again to apply conventional solution treatment followed by quenching and artificial aging processes. Repetitive heating/cooling steps are a significant cause of energy loss. The aim of this study was to provide time and energy efficiency by combining hot forging and solution treatment processes in a single high temperature process. To achieve this a new and improved heat treatment pattern was introduced. AA6082 parts were quenched immediately from a rather high forging temperature and artificially aged without any necessity for a second heating step and solution treatment. Mechanical properties of parts heat treated by this new pattern were than compared to the mechanical properties of parts heat treated conventionally. Heat treatment of AA6082 alloys were carried out for 30 minutes at three different temperatures (480, 510 and 540 °C) for comparison, followed by forging, water quenching and artificial aging (180°C, 8h). Mechanical properties of each sample were investigated using hardness and tensile tests. Elemental analysis and microstructural characterization were carried out using Energy Dispersive Spectrometry (EDS), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Optical Microscope (OM). Required minimum hardness for the samples after heat treatment was considered as 90 HB. This hardness value could not be obtained for the parts forged/solution treated at 480°C and 510°C. Hardness values of parts heat treated at 540°C, water quenched and aged at 180°C were higher than 90 HB.

High entropy alloys (HEA) are an exciting new class of alloys composed of several metallic elements with equiatomic or near-equiatomic composition to maximize configurational entropy, leading to desirable properties. However, during solidification, as in casting or welding processes, elements segregate, creating local regions of distinct composition. In conventional alloy systems, homogenization heat treatments are used to remove this segregation effect. This study examines the conditions of the heat treatment needed in HEA alloys. First, the solidification behavior of equiatomic alloy composition AlCoCrCuFeNi is modeled using the Scheil module within Thermo-Calc along with the TCHEA2 database. Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) is performed across the dendrite arms of the as-melted HEA to compare with the Scheil calculations. The resulting dendritic and interdendritic compositions are used as inputs in Thermo- Calc to determine the stable phases as a function of temperature. Selected heat treatments are conducted on the as-melted HEA to compare with the calculation results.