Stress relieving is also known as ______ for reducing internal stresses in steel material.

Stress relieving is a thermal treatment process designed to reduce internal stresses in materials, particularly steel, that can arise from manufacturing processes such as welding, casting, and machining. The correct term associated with reducing residual stresses specifically in steel is annealing.

Annealing involves heating the material to a specific temperature and then slowly cooling it down. This process allows for the reorganization of the microstructure in the steel, which alleviates stress and promotes improved ductility and toughness. The gradual cooling ensures that the material avoids the development of new stresses that could occur with rapid cooling.

While tempering and normalizing are related processes, they serve different purposes. Tempering is mainly used to reduce brittleness in hardened steel and enhance its toughness, but it does not specifically focus on stress relief. Normalizing, on the other hand, aims to refine the grain structure of the metal and improve its mechanical properties, but again, it does not primarily target the reduction of internal stresses as effectively as annealing does. Therefore, the terminology that specifically relates to the reduction of internal stresses through heating and controlled cooling is correctly identified as annealing.