Hardening

Hardening means making a material, particularly a metal, physically harder, and includes particular cases such as:

• Hardening (metallurgy), the strengthening of metal alloys by heat treatment
• Case hardening, the process of hardening the surface of a metal by infusing elements into the material's surface forming a thin layer of a harder alloy
  • Case hardening of rocks
  • Case hardening (woodworking)
• Air-hardening steel
• Cryogenic hardening
• Differential hardening
• Diffusion hardening
• Fire hardening
• Hardening of the arteries
• Induction hardening
• Laser hardening
• Precipitation hardening
• Quenching#Quench hardening
• a synonym for sclerotization occurring in arthropods
• Shock hardening
• Work hardening, also called strain hardening or cold working
  • Strain hardening exponent, a materials constant used in calculations regarding work hardening

It also has the metaphorical meaning of making something more resistant to some threat:

• Hardening (botany) or cold hardening, the process by which a plant survives freezing temperatures
• Hardening (computing), the process of securing a system
• Intellectual property hardening
• Target hardening, making a military or civilian installation resistant to armed attack
• Radiation hardening, making a component or installation resistant to ionizing radiation
• g-hardening, protection of something against high g-force due to acceleration
• Windows Service Hardening, protection of Microsoft Windows services

It may also mean:

• Absorption hardening, in nuclear engineering, an increase in the average energy of neutrons by absorption of those of lower energy

See also

• Harden (disambiguation)
• Hardness

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.