STUDY ON THE EFFECT OF COMPOSITION AND VARIATION OF Sn/Zn COOLING MEDIA ON NICKEL ALLOY STEEL THROUGH HOT FORGING AND AUSTEMPERING

STUDY ON THE EFFECT OF COMPOSITION AND VARIATION OF Sn/Zn COOLING MEDIA ON NICKEL ALLOY STEEL THROUGH HOT FORGING AND AUSTEMPERING. Laterite steel with nickel content is expected to be a solution to overcome the lack of domestic steel availability and dependence on imports. This research was conducted to develop Nickel-Chromium-Molybdenum alloy steel used Grinding ball for cement industrial applications. Grinding ball is the one of imported steel products needed to be crushing and size reduction the ores or cement. In addition to import issues, grinding balls have a significant problem: their mechanical properties that do not meet SNI 1049 require the material to have a minimum hardness value of 45 HRC. In this study, the characteristics of Nickel alloy steel were investigated further through heat treatment of forgings heated at the austenitizing temperature of 950 °C and austempering with variations in the cooling medium of Sn/Zn solution. The cooling medium was chosen because it has a melting temperature in the phase diagram area to form the bainite microstructure with complex and challenging characteristics, both of which are required in material for grinding ball applications. In particular, the hardness value that passed the SNI 1069 standard was the use of samples with a Cr-Mo alloy of 1%-wt with a hardness value of 45.92 HRC for Sn Austemper and 48.07 HRC for Zn austemper.

Influence of Thermomechanical Treatments on Corrosion of Carbon Steel in Synthetic Geopolymer Fly Ash Pore Solution

In this study the effect of thermomechanical treatments in chloride induced pitting corrosion is presented for carbon steel rebars exposed to synthetic fly ash (FA) pore solution. Due to the likely phase transformations that steel reinforcements in concrete experience during the event of a fire, the understanding of the corrosion behavior of such phases is key in predicting the stability of the structure. The motivation for this study arrives from the scarce literature regarding the corrosion behavior of thermomechanically treated steel reinforcements in FA environments and the need for further investigation to understand its mechanism. In order to better understand the effects on the corrosion behavior electrochemical measurements including cyclic potentiodynamic polarization curves (CPP) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were used. It was found that quenched specimens showed enhanced corrosion kinetics as their icorr values were higher, being of 3.18 × 10−5 and 2.20 × 10−5 A/cm2 for water and oil quenched compared to 2.13 × 10−6 A/cm2 for the as-received. Furthermore, the effective capacitance of the double layer (Ceff,dl) showed the lower stability of the passive film for the quenched specimens, with values of 1.11 × 10−3 µF/cm2 for the as-receive sample that decreased to 8.12 × 10−4 µF/cm2 for the water quenched sample. The anodic charge transfer coefficient in the synthetic FA alkaline pore solution changes from 0.282 to 0.088, for the as-received and water quenched rebars specimens, respectively. These results indicate a lower energy barrier for the anodic dissolution reaction of quenched specimens, indicating that martensite and bainite microstructures promote corrosion process. Enhanced corrosion was found on quenched samples presenting martensite and bainite microstructure as showed by the increased pith depth, with values of 5 μm compared to 1 μm observed in the as-received samples.

Wear Resistance of Medium Carbon Steel with Different Microstructures

In this research, the tribological properties of different microstructures of medium carbon steel produced by either an austempered process or quenched-tempered process are investigated. The as-received samples with annealed microstructure (spherodized) are austempered to obtain a bainite microstructure or quenched-tempered to obtain a tempered martensite microstructure. The tribological performance of these microstructures was studied using a ball-on-disk UMT3 tribometer. The results indicated that both bainite microstructures and tempered-martensite microstructures produced better wear resistance than pearlite microstructures. At the same hardness level, the austempered disk specimens have less cracking due to higher fracture toughness compared to quenched and tempered steel. For the disks, tempered martensite microstructures produced more plastic deformation compared with bainite microstructures. Mild abrasive wear was observed on the harder disks, however, smearing wear was observed on the softer disks. Adhered debris particles were observed on the balls.

In-situ observation on the influences of Ti on phase transformation of weld metal processed by high-heat input welding

The in-situ observation of the phase transformation processes of weld metal during high-heat input welding were carried out by a high temperature laser confocal microscope. The influences of Ti content on the phase transformation process were investigated. It was found that the Ti inclusions could act as the nucleation sites for α→γ transformation during the heating stage of welding thermo cycle and inhibit the growth of austenite grains. The number of inclusions was increased with increasing Ti content. During the cooling stage of welding thermo cycle, the inclusions could induce the nucleation of acicular ferrites when the Ti content was below 0.078%. With increasing Ti content, more acicular ferrites collided with each other and restricted their further growth. When the Ti content was increased up to 0.115%, a proportion of Ti atoms were dissolved in the matrix, which increased the hardenability and thus generated the lath bainite microstructure instead of acicular ferrite.

Microstructure and Mechanical Characterization of Austempered AISI 1018 Steel

AISI 1018 mild steels are widely used for engineering applications in machine components and for structural purposes. These materials suffer mechanical damages especially when used under critical conditions of extreme load. In this study, the effect of austempering heat-treatment on the hardness, tensile strength, impact energy and the microstructure of AISI 1018 steels were evaluated. The steel specimens were subjected to austempering heat-treatment by austenitizing at a temperature of 830°C, maintained at this temperature for a period of 1 hour 30 minutes, before rapidly cooled down in a NaNO3 salt bath maintained at 300°C for isothermal transformation for a further 50 minutes before finally cooled down to room temperature. Microstructural analysis using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) shows transformation from ferrite/pearlite to bainite microstructure. The tensile strengths of the specimen increased from 400 MPa to 500 Mpa; hardness increased from an average value of 140Rc to 162Rc; while impact energy increased from 15.6 Joule to 30.6 Joule by the austempering heat-treatment. Keywords—Austempering, hardness, tensile strength, impact energy, microstructure

A Comparison of the Ballistic Performances of Various Microstructures in MIL-A-12560 Armor Steel

Due to their advantageous properties, there is a growing interest in developing armor steels containing fully or partially bainitic microstructures. In this study, bainitic and martensitic microstructures were obtained in rolled homogeneous armor (RHA) steel samples and their ballistic protection performances were investigated. RHA (MIL-A-12560) steel samples were subjected to isothermal heat treatments at three different temperatures, where one temperature (360 °C) was above the martensite formation start (Ms) temperature of 336 °C while the other two (320 °C and 270 °C) were below. For the assessment of the ballistic protection performance, the kinetic energy losses of the 12.7 mm bullets fired at the test samples were determined. The promising nature of the bainite microstructure was confirmed as the sample isothermally treated at 360 °C provided approximately 10% higher ballistic protection as compared to the regular RHA sample of tempered martensite microstructure. However, the ballistic performances of the isothermally treated samples decreased as the treatment temperature went below the Ms temperature. Following the ballistic tests, hardness measurements, impact tests at −40 °C, and macro- and microstructural examinations of the samples were performed. No correlation was found between the hardness and impact energies of the samples and their ballistic performances.