Abstract
The effects of eight types of spheroidizing annealing conditions including annealing temperature, annealing time, cooling rate, and furnace atmosphere on the microstructure and hardeness were determined in SCM440 steel which has been widely used for automotive parts. The well-spheroidized structure and minimum hardness were obtained when the steel was heat-treated at $770^{\circ}C$ for 6 hours, cooled to $720^{\circ}C$ at a cooling rate of $24^{\circ}C/h$, and then kept for 7 hours at the $720^{\circ}C$ followed by air cooling. In order to increase the productivity and to save the manufacturing cost, it is desirable to apply a faster cooling rate to the spheroidizing annealing. It was found that a cooling rate of $100^{\circ}C/hr$ was the fastest cooling rate applicable to the SCM440 steel among the four cooling rates used in this study. The microstructure consisted of ferrite and very fine spheroidized cementite when the steel was annealed for 13 hours at $720^{\circ}C$ below $A_{C1}$ temperature. This was caused by the short annealing time and the retarding effect of Cr and Mo on both the dissolution of pearlite to cementite and coarsening of spheroidized cementite. The steel heat treated in air showed the decarburized layer of about $125{\mu}m$ in thickness at the surface.
