4. Conclusion

After having surveyed the After describing a number of heat treatments by their main metallurgical purposes and giving examples in various economically important alloy families (steels, aluminum, copper, titanium, superalloys), we set out to trace the metallurgical principles behind these operations and the structure-property relationships that guide them.

Allotropic transformations and their variants (diffusion or martensitic transformations), as well as the control of mechanical properties by controlling the morphology and crystallography of second-phase precipitates, form the basis of institutionalized heat treatments. These represent an important milestone in the development of any metal alloy, either because they make certain shaping operations technically or economically feasible, or because they enable a wide range of properties to be used...