Metals are used by just about everyone every day. This project is about how metals can be made stronger by the process of hardening and an insight into why it becomes stronger. In order to understand the behavior of metals, knowledge about the structure, bond of metals, why metals harden and what happens when they move are of utmost importance. By applying a large force to the metal, its grains start cracking leading to irregularity in the surface of metals in turn making the metal more resistant to any deformation.
The test was done on 3 metals namely, Copper, Aluminum and Steel. The metal piece was kept on an anvil and blows were given using a hammer. The number of blows required to stiffen the sample was found out. Graphs were plotted comparing the number of hits required to stiffen each of the metals. It was seen that steel required larger number of hits when compared to Aluminum and Copper. But as expected all the three substances did stiffen and the stiffness was more around the area where the hammer was in direct contact with the metal. This ability of metals to harden can be used in everyday metal objects such as kitchen knives, tools etc which need to have an increased resistance to deformation.
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