Steels for heat treatment — Properties and selection guide

Special heat-treated steels for mechanical engineering are essentially steels designed for mechanics who use the final heat treatment to give these steels high-performance properties, while taking advantage of the possibilities offered by one or more intermediate heat treatments to process them (by forming, machining, etc.) under the least penalizing and most economical conditions. In so doing, mechanical engineers make the most of the remarkable adaptability of steels, which derives from the wide range of variations in their mechanical properties depending on the various structural states that can be imparted to them by heat treatment.

The range of potentialities offered by special structural steels for heat treatment (in the broadest sense of the term) is vast, so it's imperative to make the right choice, taking all parameters into account.

The complete study of the subject includes the articles :

• M 4 530 –Steels for heat treatment. Properties and selection guide (this article);

• M 4 531 –Steels for heat treatment. Standardization ;

• M 4 532 –Steels for heat treatment. Processing ;

• Doc. M 4 533 –Steels for heat treatment.