This chapter discusses the fundamentals of heat treating of alloy steels. It begins with an overview of the designations of AISI-SAE grades of alloy steels, followed by a description of the purposes served by alloying elements. The effects of specific alloying elements on the heat treatment of alloy steels and of boron on hardenability of alloy steels are then discussed. Procedures for heat treating four specific alloy steels (4037, 4037H; 4140, 4140H; 4340, 4340; and E52100) are subsequently presented. The chapter concludes with a brief account of austempering and martempering treatments.

High-strength steels are susceptible to stress-corrosion cracking (SCC) even in moist air. This chapter identifies such steels and the applications where they are typically found. It provides information on crack growth kinetics and crack propagation models in which hydrogen embrittlement is the predominant mechanism. It explains how different application variables affect SCC, including loading mode, state of stress, type of steel, temperature, electrochemical potential, heat treatment, and deformation processes. It also compares SCC characteristics in different high-strength steels and discusses the influence of composition, steelmaking practice, and application environment.

Steels with martensitic and tempered martensitic microstructures, though sometimes perceived as brittle, exhibit plasticity and ductile fracture behavior under certain conditions. This chapter describes the alloying and tempering conditions that produce a ductile form of martensite in low-carbon steels. It also discusses the effect of tempering temperature on the mechanical behavior and deformation properties of medium-carbon steels.

Several limitations in achieving optimal gear performance with conventional nitriding have led researchers to work on a variety of novel and improved nitriding processes. Of these, ion/plasma nitriding offers some promising results, which are reviewed in this chapter. The chapter concludes with a case history describing the application of ion nitriding to an internal ring gear of an epicyclic gearbox.

This chapter describes the causes of cracking, embrittlement, and low toughness in carbon and low-alloy steels and their differentiating fracture surface characteristics. It discusses the interrelated effects of composition, processing, and microstructure and contributing factors such as hot shortness associated with copper and overheating and burning as occur during forging. It addresses various types of embrittlement, including quench embrittlement, tempered-martensite embrittlement, liquid-metal-induced embrittlement, and hydrogen embrittlement, and concludes with a discussion on high-temperature hydrogen attack and its effect on strength and ductility.

Bainite is an intermediate temperature transformation product of austenite. This chapter describes the conditions under which bainite is likely to form. It discusses the effects of alloying on bainitic transformation, the difference between upper and lower bainite, and the influence of solute drag on bainite formation mechanisms. It also discusses the development of ferrite-carbide bainites and their effect on toughness, hardness, and ductility.

This appendix consists of a table listing cross reference to non-AISI and AISI steels of various countries, namely France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Nitriding is a surface hardening heat treatment that introduces nitrogen into the surface of steel while it is in the ferritic condition. Gas nitriding using ammonia as the nitrogen-carrying species is the most commonly employed process and is emphasized in this chapter. Nitriding produces a wear- and fatigue-resistant surface on gear teeth and is used in applications where gears are not subjected to high shock loads or contact stress. It is useful for gears that need to maintain their surface hardness at elevated temperatures. Gears used in industrial, automotive, and aerospace applications are commonly nitrided. This chapter discusses the processes involved in gas, controlled, and ion nitriding.

Most steels that are hardened are subjected to a subcritical heat treatment referred to as tempering. Tempering improves the toughness of as-quenched martensitic microstructures but lowers strength and hardness. This chapter describes the microstructural changes that occur during tempering and their effect on the mechanical properties of steel. It also discusses the effect of alloying elements and the formation of oxide colors.

Nitriding is a case-hardening process used for alloy steel gears and is quite similar to case carburizing. Nitriding of gears can be done in either a gas or liquid medium containing nitrogen. This chapter discusses the processes involved in gas nitriding. It reviews the effects of white layer formation in nitrided gears and presents general recommendations for nitrided gears. The chapter describes the microstructure, overload and fatigue damage, bending-fatigue life, cost, and distortion of nitrided gears. Information on nitriding steels used in Europe and the applications of nitrided gears are also provided. The chapter presents case studies on successful nitriding of a gear and on the failure of nitrided gears used in a gearbox subjected to a load with wide fluctuations.

Alloy steels are alloys of iron with the addition of carbon and one or more of the following elements: manganese, chromium, nickel, molybdenum, niobium, titanium, tungsten, cobalt, copper, vanadium, silicon, aluminum, and boron. Alloy steels exhibit superior mechanical properties compared to plain carbonsteels as a result of alloying additions. This chapter describes the beneficial effects of these alloying elements in steels. It discusses the mechanical properties, nominal compositions, advantages, and engineering applications of various classes of alloy steels. They are low-alloy structural steels, SAE/AISI alloy steels, high-fracture-toughness steels, maraging steels, austenitic manganese steels, high-strength low-alloy steels, dual-phase steels, and transformation-induced plasticity steels.

This appendix provides tensile property and fracture toughness data for various low-alloy and stainless steels.

The successful design and manufacture of gears are influenced largely by design requirements, material selection, and proper heat treatment. This chapter addresses the cost factors and tradeoffs involved in selecting a material, design features, and a heat treating process to optimize gear performance for a particular application.

This appendix is a collection of isothermal diagrams for carbon steels, chromium-molybdenum steels, nickel-chromium-molybdenum steels, nickel-molybdenum steels, and chromium steels.

This chapter discusses the factors that play a role in fatigue failures and how they affect the service life of metals and structures. It describes the stresses associated with high-cycle and low-cycle fatigue and how they differ from the loading profiles typically used to generate fatigue data. It compares the Gerber, Goodman, and Soderberg methods for predicting the effect of mean stress from bending data, describes the statistical nature of fatigue measurements, and explains how plastic strain causes cyclic hardening and softening. It discusses the work of Wohler, Basquin, and others and how it led to the development of a strain-based approach to fatigue and the use of fatigue strength and ductility coefficients. It reviews the three stages of fatigue, beginning with crack initiation followed by crack growth and final fracture. It explains how fracture mechanics can be applied to crack propagation and how stress concentrations affect fatigue life. It also discusses fatigue life improvement methods and design approaches.

This chapter covers the friction and wear behaviors of carbon, alloy, and tool steels. It begins a review of commercially available shapes and forms. It then describes the metallurgy and microstructure of various designations and grades of each type of steel and explains how it affects their performance in adhesive and abrasive wear applications and in environments where they are subjected to solid particle, droplet, slurry, and cavitation erosion and fretting damage.

One of the primary advantages of steels is their ability to attain high strengths through heat treatment while still retaining some degree of ductility. Heat treatments can be used to not only harden steels but also to provide other useful combinations of properties, such as ductility, formability, and machinability. This chapter discusses various heat treatment processes, namely annealing, stress relieving, normalizing, spheroidizing, and hardening by austenitizing, quenching and tempering. It also discusses two types of interrupted quenching processes: martempering and austempering. The chapter concludes with a brief section on temper embrittlement.

Induction and flame hardening are methods of hardening the surfaces of components, usually in selected areas, by the short-time application of high-intensity heating followed by quenching. These processes are used when gear teeth require high hardness, but size or configuration does not lend itself to carburizing and quenching the entire part. This chapter focuses on the processes involved in the induction and flame hardening, covering the applicable materials, hardening patterns, preheat treatment, quenching, tempering, surface hardness, case depth, hardening problems, dual-frequency process, and applications.

This chapter examines two important strengthening mechanisms, martensitic and bainitic transformations, both of which occur under nonequilibrium cooling conditions. It explains how time-temperature-transformation diagrams are constructed and how they are used to understand and control the formation of martensite and bainite in steel and other alloys. It describes the morphology of both types of structures, the factors that influence their formation, how they respond to tempering processes, and their effect on mechanical properties and behaviors. It also discusses the role of transformation hysteresis in shape memory alloys.

The crux of this chapter is to develop a method to quantitatively define hardenability. The chapter includes the empirical methods to estimate the hardenability knowing the chemical composition, describes prior austenite grain size, and examines their utility. It then reviews the Jominy end-quench test and explains its relation to hardenability. The chapter outlines the concepts of the critical diameter and the ideal critical diameter, leading to establishing a quantitative measure of hardenability. Next, it examines methods that have been developed which allow estimation of the ideal critical diameter from the chemical composition and the austenite grain size. The chapter reviews the methods which allow calculation of the Jominy curve from a value of the ideal critical diameter. Additionally, it describes the selection and application of H-band steels. Finally, the chapter describes the effect of boron on the hardenability of steels.