Interesting...8^)
When I was in Mech Eng lab freshman year, all we did was Rockwell and Brinell testing, as well as austenitizing iron--especially with the iron-carbon phase diagrams, etc.
Oil cooling vs. water cooling, etc...
Excellent! You know all the good stuff!!
The focus of my work is NbC precipitation strengthening of microalloyed (pipeline) steels.
I do some vicker's hardness testing for my research, but due to different cooling trends & different microstructures I can't conclude too much from the VHN. I am dissolving steel samples to determine how much Nb is still in solution, and how much has formed a precipitate.