According to CCTV News report on August 7th, the International Organization for Standardization recently released the international standard 'Metallic Materials - Heat Treatment - Terms', which was revised under the leadership of China. This standard involved Chinese experts as the convener of the working group and the project leader, with experts from Germany, Japan, Finland, France, Italy, and other countries participating. This is the first international standard in the field of heat treatment of metallic materials that was revised under China's leadership.
This standard defines nearly 300 terms related to heat treatment of ferrous metals such as steel and cast iron. It serves as a common standard for technical exchanges, product testing, and trade recognition in industries such as steel, automotive, aerospace, energy equipment, and construction machinery worldwide.
This revision has reorganized the terminology system for heat treatment. All professional terms have been reclassified into 9 major categories, covering a comprehensive range of heat treatment processes such as general basics, annealing and normalizing, quenching, tempering and distribution, aging, surface heat treatment, chemical heat treatment, microstructure, and defects. The logical hierarchy has become clearer. New terms from the past decade's global heat treatment technologies have been incorporated, including 66 cutting-edge professional terms such as continuous austenitization curves, expanded austenite, and fully deep surface quenching hardening layers. This has addressed the shortcomings in terminology for new techniques. Disagreements in terminology definitions between different countries have been resolved, and more than 10 outdated or ambiguous terms have been removed or revised. The multilingual comparison has been comprehensively upgraded, providing terminology comparators in English, French, German, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese. The Chinese terminology continues to be the global standard for general basics in heat treatment.
By establishing a globally unified terminology system that recognizes multiple languages, this standard will continue to promote the elimination of industrial technical barriers, reduction of transaction costs, and assurance of product quality in countries around the world. It will provide crucial support for the globalization of cooperation, technological innovation, and trade facilitation in the ferrous metal heat treatment industry.
