Coupled Effects of Heating Method and Rate on the Measured Nonisothermal Austenization Temperature of Steel SUS420J1 in Heat Treatment

Steel SUS420J1, which is the key material of turbine blade, is generally treated by heat to improve the strength prior to use. And the austenization process at different heating rates would determine the depth and width of heat treatment. In this paper, the austenization temperatures in heat treatment with the heat from induction wire, infrared lamp, and laser are measured, respectively. The effect of heating rate on the austenization temperature has been investigated. The research results show that the measured austenization temperature increases with the heating rate. And this trend is specially enlarged in the heat treatment method with larger gradient of temperature distribution, e.g., laser. The calculated phase transformation threshold shows that negative linear relationship exists between the logarithmic heating rate and the logarithmic austenization threshold for both induction heating and infrared heating, while abnormal relationship exists for laser heating. Thermal finite element analysis (FEA) models are then developed to calculate the temperature distributions in these three heating methods, and the calculated results show that the nonuniform temperature distribution leads to the gap between the measured austenization temperature and that of the material, which also leads to the abnormal variation law of austenization threshold in laser heating. The measured austenization temperature in induction heating method is thought to be the closest to the actual austenization temperature of the material among these three methods. This paper provides a guide for choosing the proper parameters to heat the steel SUS420J1 in hardening.