What Makes Quenched Steel so Hard?

That is a pretty impressive article, Dr. Thomas. It's way more than I will ever need to know about metallurgy, but still cool stuff nonetheless.
 
Larrin, I also normally like to stay 'in forum', but thank you for your website, it is a clean layout, & has good diagrams and no obnoxious ads (but of course I use ad blockers & block javascript always since it's become a common virus/malware attack vector).

I make an exception for your website :) thanks
 
jc57 said:
That is a pretty impressive article, Dr. Thomas. It's way more than I will ever need to know about metallurgy, but still cool stuff nonetheless.
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Mo2 said:
What about steel high in nitrogen like vanax
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Nitrogen behaves in a similar way to carbon. For example, look at the solid solution strengthening plot, where carbon and nitrogen are along the same line.
 
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dirc said:
Larrin, I also normally like to stay 'in forum', but thank you for your website, it is a clean layout, & has good diagrams and no obnoxious ads (but of course I use ad blockers & block javascript always since it's become a common virus/malware attack vector).

I make an exception for your website :) thanks
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I posted a few articles to the Shop Talk section before starting the site, and that worked okay, but forums just aren’t all that well suited to longform content. Having the website means that an archive of articles is automatically generated and also means I can post the same article to multiple places.
 
Larrin said:
Nitrogen behaves in a similar way to carbon. For example, look at the solid solution strengthening plot, where carbon and nitrogen are along the same line.
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So, in a high nitrogen steel, is the nitrogen replacing carbon? I imagine there is only so much "room" in the crystal lattice structure, so is carbon forced out and replaced by nitrogen, or is there room for everybody?
 
danbot said:
So, in a high nitrogen steel, is the nitrogen replacing carbon? I imagine there is only so much "room" in the crystal lattice structure, so is carbon forced out and replaced by nitrogen, or is there room for everybody?
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Martensite can handle more carbon than what would be considered “optimum” for required hardness and toughness. For the vast majority of nitrogen-alloyed steels it would be additive, ie carbon + nitrogen gives your carbon equivalent.
 
Larrin said:
How does steel transform to martensite? Why does more carbon lead to higher strength steel? http://knifesteelnerds.com/2018/04/10/what-makes-quenched-steel-so-hard/
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Apparently the carbon in the steel causes the grain structure to have deformations and contributes to the martensitic grain structure. I had read that if there is no carbon then the martensite wouldn’t form.

I read it somewhere on this great site. Awesome steel information.
http://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/index.html
 
Larrin said:
Martensite can handle more carbon than what would be considered “optimum” for required hardness and toughness. For the vast majority of nitrogen-alloyed steels it would be additive, ie carbon + nitrogen gives your carbon equivalent.
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So what would be the advantage to a nitrogen alloyed steel for knives and/or industrially?
 
danbot said:
So what would be the advantage to a nitrogen alloyed steel for knives and/or industrially?
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Corrosion resistance and toughness from what I understand.
 
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I too would like to know more! Sweet thread larrin.
 
danbot said:
So what would be the advantage to a nitrogen alloyed steel for knives and/or industrially?
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Nitrogen improves corrosion resistance by a couple of mechanisms; I will write about nitrogen-alloyed steels at some point. Another application is nitriding of steel.
 
Lapedog said:
Apparently the carbon in the steel causes the grain structure to have deformations and contributes to the martensitic grain structure. I had read that if there is no carbon then the martensite wouldn’t form.

I read it somewhere on this great site. Awesome steel information.
http://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/index.html
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His writing in general is very good. I have also used some schematic diagrams from his site, though it’s not always clear if he is the one who made them.
 
Larrin said:
Nitrogen improves corrosion resistance by a couple of mechanisms; I will write about nitrogen-alloyed steels at some point. Another application is nitriding of steel.
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Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions Larrin!:thumbsup:
 
Please note that I am a total ignoramus on this subject so I am simply parroting what I read.

For all I know the reason steel gets hard when quenched is because of gnomes.
 
Lapedog said:
Please note that I am a total ignoramus on this subject so I am simply parroting what I read.

For all I know the reason steel gets hard when quenched is because of gnomes.
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Hopefully you know better after reading my article.
 
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