_Aging Solution Annealing
Both applications are important steps during age-hardening, which is a method for heat treating alloys, in order to increase their hardness and strength.
In solution heat treatment (solution annealing), the alloying elements which facilitate the age hardening by brought into solution by the addition of heat and are then abruptly quenched, so that the material is hardened but can also become brittle.
The aging process, in which the material is again subjected to specific material-dependent temperatures, enables the brittleness of the material structure that occurs after quenching to be counteracted and the hardness and strength of the material are achieved in a targeted way. A differentiation is made between natural aging and artificial aging.