Craft · 6 pages · 12 min
How quenching hardens steel
A fast cool traps carbon in the iron and turns the hot steel into hard martensite.
When the purchase is complete, return to the original window. It will refresh.
From the opening
Quenching hardens steel by heating it until the structure becomes austenite, then cooling it so fast that the carbon cannot settle into the softer arrangement it wants. The iron is forced into martensite, a strained structure full of trapped carbon that resists cutting and also resists bending. The opening covers austenite dissolves the carbon, a fast cool makes martensite, and low carbon barely hardens.
The rest of the brief — the later sections and the reading notes — opens after Stripe confirms payment.
Inside
- Austenite dissolves the carbon
- A fast cool makes martensite
- Low carbon barely hardens
- A file skates on success
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- Martensite formed by quenching austenite
- Critical cooling rate in hardening steel