Abstract The beneficial effects of work hardening have been long known to, and appreciated by, the steel industry and have been accepted as a step in the same direction as heat treatment. Because of the obvious difficulty with buckling, however, so far only the tension mode and the transverse compression mode have been commonly used (e.g., pipe expanders for tension, and cold-rolling, cold-drawing for transverse compression). Treatment stresses in the tension method are restricted to stresses less than the ultimate strength of the material. Compression loads can be many times that of the ultimate tensile strength of the material.