Hardening (metallurgy)
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In metallurgy, hardening describes techniques to increase the hardness of a material. There are five main hardening mechanisms:
- Hall-Petch hardening, a hardening that result due to a decrease in grain size.
- Cold working, also called stain hardening
- Solid Solution strengthening
- precipitation hardening
- Martensitic transformations
All hardening mechanisms, except of the martensitic transformation, introduce dislocations or defects in a crystal lattice that act as barriers to slip.
