Effect of Innovative Quenching-Partitioning Heat Treatment on Microstructure and Hardness Properties of Medium Carbon Steel According to Traditional Quenching-Tempering Heat Treatment

Ductility in the formability of the steels is the desired material property. It is possible to obtain the desired ductility by the traditional quenching-tempering heat treatment which is often used in industry. However, decreasing the hardness of steel with increasing ductility is an undesirable factor. It is aimed to obtain a good combination of ductility and strength with the innovative quenching-partitioning heat treatment. In this study, microstructure and hardness properties of quenching-tempering and quenching-partitioning heat treatments applied to steel having 0.38 carbon content were compared. Despite the retained austenite observed in the microstructure, it was concluded that the hardness values obtained by the quenching-partitioning heat treatment were higher than the traditional quenching-tempering heat treatment