Air-Hardening Die-Forged Con-Rods—Achievable Mechanical Properties of Bainitic and Martensitic Concepts

Three air-hardening forging steels are presented, concerning their microstructure and their mechanical properties. The materials have been produced industrially and achieve either bainitic or martensitic microstructures by air-cooling directly from the forging heat. The bainitic steels are rather conservative steel concepts with an overall alloy concentration of approximately 3 wt.%, while the martensitic concept is alloyed with 4 wt.% manganese (and additional elements), and therefore belongs to the recently developed steel class of medium manganese steels. The presented materials achieve high strengths (YS: 720 MPa to 850 MPa, UTS: 1055 MPa to 1350 MPa), good elongations (Au: 4.0 MPa to 5.9 MPa, At: 12.3 MPa to 14.9 MPa), and impact toughnesses (up to 37 J) in the air-hardened condition. It is shown that air-hardened steels achieve properties close to standard Q + T steels, while being produced with a significantly reduced heat treatment.

EXPERIMENTAL MILLING STUDIES ON HARDENED STEELS - A REVIEW

Hardened steels have numerous applications in the construction of molds and dies due, in particular, to their outstanding thermo-mechanical characteristics, such as wear resistance and high stiffness, but especially dimensional stability at high temperatures. Machined surfaces are conditioned to have important tribological characteristics. Thus, a high quality of machined surfaces is achieved by milling processes with high cutting speeds. These types of processes even manage to replace grinding or electro-erosion machining processes with a solid electrode. The paper presents a review of experimental studies in recent years from industry and scientific research. Issues are outlined which justify the utility of machining hard metals by machining processes, with a focus on machining by milling processes. Starting from input parameters, such as technological parameters, blank material, cutting tool material and machining environment, their influence is analysed on output parameters, such as chip morphology, cutting tool wear and surface integrity.

Cutting Force When Machining Hardened Steels

This article deals primarily with the problem of determining the cutting force when machining hardened steels. Secondary issues are focused on the evaluation of surface quality on machined samples and the recommendation of cutting conditions. A wide variety of components are used in engineering, the final heat treatment of which is hardening. These components are usually critical in a particular product. The quality of these components determines the correct functioning of the entire technical equipment and ultimately its service life. In our case, these are the core parts of thrust bearings, specifically the rolling elements. The subject of the experiment is machining these components in the hardened state with cubic boron nitride tools and continuous measurement of the cutting force using a dynamometer. The following evaluation assesses the surface quality by both touch and non-touch methods. A structural equation with appropriate constant and exponents was then constructed from the data obtained using the dynamometer.

Phase Transformations and Microstructure of the Alloyed Steels for Mining Application

The dilatometer study of the austenite transformations in steels with different chemical composition was conducted. The studied steels were classified as the air hardened steels of different alloying systems (Cr-Ni-Mo, Cr-Mn-Si-Mo and Cr-Mo-V) designed for the mining applications (rock drilling equipment, drilling instrument). The microstructure of the steels was investigated after continuous cooling at the rates of 0.1...30 °C/s from the austenitization temperature down to the ambient temperature. The CCT diagrams of the studied steels were plotted showing that the alloying with different set of elements can provide the desired hardenability and microstructure.

Role of Vanadium Carbide in Hydrogen Embrittlement of Press-Hardened Steels: Strategy From 1500 to 2000 MPa

This work investigated hydrogen trapping and hydrogen embrittlement (HE) in two press-hardened steels, 22MnB5 for 1,500 MPa grade and 34MnB5V for 2000 MPa grade, respectively. Superior to the 22MnB5 steel, the newly developed 34MnB5V steel has an ultimate tensile strength of over 2000 MPa without sacrificing ductility due to the formation of vanadium carbides (VCs). Simulated press hardening was applied to two steels, and hydrogen was induced by cathodic charging. Susceptibility to HE was validated by slow strain-rate tensile test. When hydrogen content was high, the 34MnB5V steel fractured in elastic regime. However, when hydrogen content was 0.8–1.0 ppmw, the 34MnB5V steel bore much higher stress than the 22MnB5 steel before fracture. The behavior of hydrogen trapping was investigated by thermal desorption analyses. Although the two steels trapped similar amounts of hydrogen after cathodic charging, their trapping mechanisms and effective trapping sites were different. In summary, a finer prior austenite grain size due to the pinning effect of VCs can also improve the toughness of 34MnB5V steel. Moreover, trapping hydrogen by grain boundary suppresses the occurrence of hydrogen-enhanced local plasticity. Microstructural refinement enhanced by VCs improves the resistance to HE in 34MnB5V steel. Importantly, the correlation between hydrogen trapping by VCs and improvement of HE is not significant. Hence, this work presents the challenge in designing irreversible trapping sites in future press-hardened steels.