Abstract

Annealing character of cartridge brass

Author(s): Arun Kumar Verma, Prantik Mukhopadhyay, S.Prasad, A.C.Abhyankar

Cu-30%Zn alloy is known as cartridge brass and it is widely used for cartridge cases, which are produced fromhot rolled sheet by deep-drawing process at normal room temperature. Intermediate annealing is needed to ensure low work-hardening during drawing and to minimize the forming related problem of cartridge brass. Laboratory muffle furnace is used to carry out the annealing heat-treatment of deformed cartridge brass. An annealing heat treatment temperature range of (300-600)Cis used to develop structure after recovery, partial recrystalization, complete recrystallization and grain growth. The annealed structures are characterized by optical microscope equipped with microstructure analysis software. The quantitative microstructure details like average grain size and grain size distributions aremeasured. The texture characterization of annealed samples is done by pole figure measurement by X-ray texture Goniometer and subsequent texture analysis is performed by LaboTex-Edu texture analysis software. The structure and texture details show that at lower temperature recovery occurs while at higher temperature recrystallization with trace of grain growth occurs. The structure and texture in the intermediate temperature range is contributed by recovery and partial recrystallization.