In: Mechanical Engineering
If we have air cooled the 1080 steel then as air cooling itself suggest that the rate of cooling is not very high and the grains of steel get enough time to grow bigeer and bigger which is called as GRAIN GROWTH. When grains grow bigger then they will result in coarse grain structure. And strength of a material having coarse grain structure is always less than the material having fine grain structure. To improve the strength we normally do the process commonly known as GRAIN SIZE REFINEMENT. In this process we convert coarse grain structure to fine grain structure to achieve higher strength. We can also increase the strength by providing water cooling or any cooling in which rate of cooling is comparatively high than air cooling. Because when the rate of cooling of very high then grains won't get enough time to grow and will be converted into a fine grain structure resulting in higher strength.