Minia Journal of Engineering and Technology, (MJET) Vol. 33, No.

1, January 2014

Effect of Heat Treatment on the Fracture Toughness

of AISI 4140 Steel
Alaa M. Abdel Wahab, El- Giushi Mokhtar, and Asaad Mazen
Department of Production Engineering & Design
Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, EGYPT

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Abstract
Commercially available AISI 4140 steel has been studied to determine the effect of heat treatment
processes on fracture toughness KIC. Three types of heat treatments were applied in this work.
The first type is stress relief annealing, the second is full annealing and the third one is tempering.
It is found that by increasing stress relief temperature, fracture toughness KIC increased. Effect of
full annealing temperature on fracture toughness KIC is analyzed. It is found that fracture
toughness KIC increased upon full annealing up to 8600C, and then decreased with increase in full
annealing temperature. The effect of tempering temperature is also analyzed. It is shown that by
increasing tempering temperature, fracture toughness KIC increased. Also, the microstructure of
AISI 4140 steel after the heat treatments is studied.

Keywords: AISI 4140 steel, Heat treatment, Fracture toughness, Microstructure.

1. Introduction Fracture toughness is a measure of a materials

For many years, engineers have been pressed to
develop strong, lightweight alloys. Recently with
the need to conserve energy, metallurgical
engineers have been seeking higher- strength alloy
for cars, railroad equipments, and moving parts of
machinery. As long as designers worked at
ambient temperatures with the lower strength,
high ductility materials, they could generally
avoid failures by designing with stresses below
the yield strength. However, when they used the
same methods with the new high strength, low
ductility materials, there were many catastrophic
failures. In addition, the fracture was brittle and
did not exhibit even the lower levels of ductility of
the tensile test bar. New design criteria have been
developed for the safe use of these high strength
alloys on the basis of the concept of fracture
toughness, and equation developed from fracture
mechanics [1].
resistance to crack growth under a sustained
monotonic loading condition. Fracture toughness
is an extremely important parameter for structural
design since structural components designed on
the basis of plane strain fracture toughness are
expected to survive in service without undergoing
catastrophic failure [2].
Fracture toughness of a material is affected by
many factors such as heat treatment, composition
of the material, geometry of the material, etc [3].
The influence of heat treatment on fracture
toughness of steels has been a subject of
considerable research interest for many years.
Sanja et.al [4], studied the effect of quenching and
tempering on fracture toughness of 51CrV4 spring
steel (0.52 % C, 0.93% Cr, 0.16 % V), they found
that at higher tempering temperatures between
300 C and 600 C, the fracture toughness
increases from 25 to 145 MPa ).

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 Minia Journal of Engineering and Technology, (MJET) Vol. 33, No.1, January 2014

Fang [5], studied the effect of tempering on Table 1 Chemical composition of AISI 4140 steel,
fracture toughness of ultrahigh strength low alloy
wt. %
steels (high carbon low alloy steel (0.69 % C)), he
found that tempering increased fracture toughness C 0.392
by 10 to 20 % if the austenitizing temperature was
higher than 900 0C but had little effect if the Si 0.19
austenitizing temperatures was at or below 900
0
C. On the other hand, Mohamed [6], showed that Mn 0.738
the fracture toughness KIC of the U-bolt material
made in Egypt improved by using process S 0.021
annealing at 450 0C. Specifically for these bolts as
P 0.0104
received KIC = 27.23 MPa . After process
Cr 1.06
annealing KIC increased to 59.35 MPa .
Mo 0.176
The goal of the present work is to discuss the
effects of heat treatment procedures on the Ni 0.138
fracture toughness KIC of AISI 4140 steel. AISI
4140 is a medium carbon chromium - Cu 0.135
molybdenum steel used for a wide range of
applications in most industry sectors because of its w 0.0116
low cost, good forgeability and machinablility.
Typical applications are: bearings, bushes,
cylinders, gears, conveyor rolls, hydraulic shafts, Table 2 Heat treatment schedule
hollow shafts, hollow parts, nuts and rings [7].
Design Source
Heat treatment
-ation
2. Experimental Procedure
2.1. Materials Stress relief at 500, 600
The materials used in this paper are ultrahigh In-house
strength low alloy steel (AISI 4140 steel). The A and 660 0C, 0.5h, air
chemical composition of the AISI 4140 steel is cooling.
given in Table 1. AISI 4140 steel was machined
to round tensile test specimens (40 mm gauge Full annealing at 800, 860
length and 8mm diameter). B and 900 0C, 0.5h, furnace In-house

cooling.
2.2. Heat Treatment
Three types of heat treatments were employed in Austenitizing at 850 - 870
this study. The heat treatment schedule is given in 0
Table 2. C, 0.5h, oil cooling, [8, 9, 10]
C
tempering at 200, 370 and
2.3. Tensile Test
540 0C, 1h, air cooling.
Tensile test specimens of each treatments which
consummated in-house were strained to fracture
on (type ZDN 10t 191 VEB) at cross head speed 2.4. Fracture Toughness Estimation
of 5mm/min, yield strength (ys), ultimate tensile
strength ( uts), total elongation (% EL) and strain The experimental determination of fracture
hardening exponent were determined. toughness in steel involves rather lengthy and
expensive measurements. Therefore, any
analytical method enabling prediction of this
behavior from basic mechanical properties of the
material (which would involve a reduced amount

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 Minia Journal of Engineering and Technology, (MJET) Vol. 33, No.1, January 2014

of experimental work) would be extremely
appealing.
One of the most frequently used, and relatively
simple, methods for fracture toughness estimation
is the semi-empirical relationship developed by
Hahn and Rosenfield, which takes into account
the plastic zone which develops at the bottom of a
wide notch, and is fairly similar to the plastic zone
in the narrowed neck of tensile test specimens.
According to Hahn and Rosenfield, fracture
toughness can be defined by the semi-empirical
equation:
KIC = [1]
annealing temperature up to 860 0C. Above this
temperature up to about 900 0C, the fracture
toughness KIC decrease from 151 MPa to 123
MPa . These results are attributed to the high
heating temperature. Lakhteen [12], reported that
when the heating temperature increases more than
it should above A3, the austenite grains growth
and that lead to deterioration of the properties of
steel.
Figure 3 shows the variation of KIC with the
tempering temperature. It can be observed that
increasing of tempering temperature from 200 0C
to 540 0C, leads to rise of fracture toughness KIC
of 4140 steel from 32.7 MPa to 66 MPa .

where E is modulus of elasticity, the yield

Table 3 Values of KIC
stress, true strain at fracture of a smooth
tensile bar and n the strain hardening Temperature, KIC,
exponent[11]. Heat treatment 0
C MPa
2.5. Optical Metallography
The specimens for optical microscopic were As received
25 48
sectioned after the finishing of tensile test and condition
then ground by abrasive papers and then polished
and then etched. A 3% natal etchant was used to
500 51.4
reveal the microstructures.
A- Stress
3. Results and Discussion 600 61.5
relief
3.1. Fracture Toughness 660 73
The results of fracture toughness in terms of the
estimated KIC from equation [1], for the as 800 117
received condition and different heat treatments
are given in Table 3 and represented graphically B- Full
860 151
in Figures 1, 2 and 3. annealing
The fracture toughness of stress relieved 900 123
specimens at 500 0C, 600 0C and 660 0C are
plotted as a function of stress relief temperatures 200 32.7
(Fig. 1). The obtained results as shown in Table 3 C- Quenched
and Fig.1 revealed that stress relief temperatures
showed pronounced effects on fracture toughness and 370 42.4
at all used temperatures. However, the 660 0C tempering
showed the largest fracture toughness (KIC = 73 540 66
MPa ). Figure 2 reveals that when the full
annealing temperature is above 800 0C, the
fracture toughness KIC increase from 117
MPa to 151 MPa with increasing full

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 Minia Journal of Engineering and Technology, (MJET)
Figure 1 Effect of stress relief temperatures
on KIC of AISI 4140 steel.
Figure 2 Effect of full annealing temperatures
on KIC of AISI 4140 steel.
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Vol. 33, No.1, January 2014
Figure 3 Effect of tempering temperatures on
KIC of AISI 4140 steel.
3.2. Microstructures
Optical metallography has shown the
microstructures of as received, stress relief, full
annealing and quenched and tempered of AISI
4140 steel. Figure 4 (a) reveals that lath martensite
and some amount of ferrites are formed in the as
received specimen. Figure 4 (b) reveals that the
stress relief one also forms the same phases,
i.e. lath martensite and some amounts of ferrites
present in the microstructure. But in this case the
amounts of ferrites larger than the as received one.
This may have improved KIC. Optical micrograph
of full annealing specimen shows typical ferrite
and pearlite microstructures (Figure 4 (c) ).
Pearlite gives steel a lower strength but high
ductility and high KIC. Figure 4 (d) reveals that
cementite and ferrite are formed in the quenched
and tempered specimen. Microstructure is
characterised by cementite plates in the ferrite
matrix. At 200 0C, Fe2C carbide precipitation takes
place, preferentially at the martensite grain
boundaries [9].
Minia Journal of Engineering and Technology, (MJET) Vol. 33, No.1, January 2014

(a) (d)

Figure 4 Microstructures of AISI 4140 steel:

(a) as received specimen, 500x; (b) stress relief
specimen at 6600C, 500x; (c) full annealing
specimen at 8600C, 500x ; (d) quenched and
tempered specimen at 200 0C [9], 400 x.

4. Conclusions
1. The as received AISI 4140 steel has low
fracture toughness (KIC = 48 MPa

2. The fracture toughness of AISI 4140 steel

increases with the increasing stress relief
temperature from 51.4 MPa to 73 MPa .
(b)
3. When the full annealing temperature is above
800 0C, the fracture toughness KIC increases
with increasing full annealing temperature up to
860 0C (from 117 to 151 MPa ). Above
this temperature up to about 900 0C, the
fracture toughness KIC decrease down to 123
MPa .

4. The fracture toughness of AISI 4140

steel increases with increasing of tempering
temperature from 32.7 MPa to 66 MPa .
.
5. Fracture toughness correlated well with
microstructures produced by simple heat
treatments in AISI 4140 steel.
(c)

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Acknowledgements 10. B. Deanna, Heat Treatment of Steel,

The authors gratefully acknowledge Prof. Dr. Eng. Engineering 45 Materials, p. 4 7, 2011.
Ebrahiem Hamed, Professor of Chemical
Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Minia 11. V. Leskovsek, B. Ule, B. Liscic: Relations
University, for providing the heat treated between Fracture Toughness, Hardness, and of
furnace. vacuum Heat-Treated High-Speed Steel, Journal
of Materials Processing Technology, Vol. 127,
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