Inductive heat treatment offers several advantages compared to conventional furnace heat treatment such as shorter processing times. Since the optimum adjustment of the process parameters of the inductive heat treatment is complex, MCL has two facilities for the physical simulation of inductive heat treatment processes. The equipment consists of a laboratory induction unit and a quenching dilatometer with inductive heating.
On the laboratory scale, it is thereby possible to characterise the influences of accelerated heating processes on both microstructure and mechanical properties by means of real, axisymmetric components. In a coupled effort with finite element simulation the process parameters are then evaluated and adapted to adjust the accelerated heat treatment to the regarded material and alternative cross sections.
The most important issues of the current fundamental research activities are the effects of the short interaction times during austenitising and tempering on the development of the microstructure and the resulting mechanical properties of a 50CrMo4 quenched and tempered steel.