The appearance of lower hardness at the surface than at the core after through-hardening of steels is known as "inverse quench-hardening." Pioneering work was performed in the 1970s by establishing a simple test procedure where cylindrical specimens were cooled by air and brine sequentially to produce the effect. This phenomenon was described in relation to the polymer quenching and its effect to the improvement in the fatigue strength of the steel in the 1990s. The hardening mechanism in the same specimens as the pioneering work was recently examined using a finite element simulation method. However, this work has not been completed for lack of experimental quenching cooling curves for the comparisons. In this study, the same experiments using 20mm diameter cylindrical specimens as those of the pioneering work were conducted to obtain cooling curves and hardness distributions for comparing simulated results. Experimental cooling curves showed a temperature recovery as predicted by the simulation. Also the inverse quench-hardening phenomena were found in the measured and simulated hardness distributions of the specimens.
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