6. Hardness calculation model

Metallurgical calculations can be completed by a calculation of « quench » hardness associated with metallurgical structure.

The model chosen uses the hypothesis that the hardness of a polyphase material point is well represented by a law of linear mixing of the microhardnesses of the components (here phases). austenite, ferrite, pearlite, bainite, and martensite). Microhardnesses are taken as being constants of the material and of the phase in question.

The model is written \(H_{V}=\sum_{k}{Z}_{k}{H_{V}}_{k}\) with \(H_{V}\) the hardness (here) Vickers for example) of the polyphase point, \({Z}_{k}\) the proportion of the \(k\) phase and \({H_{V}}_{k}\) the hardness of phase \(k\).

Although quite simple, this model gives very correct results, see [bib14] _.

The hardness calculation is done by the post-treatment operator CALC_META with DURT_ELGA option for hardness calculations at points of Gauss and DURT_ELNO for element-wise node calculations.

The hardnesses of the various metallurgical phases are material data provided by the user under the keyword factor DURT_META of the DEFI_MATERIAU operator.