Cryogenic treatment is the process of cooling a material to extremely low temperatures to generate enhanced mechanical and physical properties. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of cryogenic treatment on the impact behavior of En 52 and 21-4N valve steels. The valve steels are subjected to shallow (193 K) and deep cryogenic treatment (85 K), and the impact behavior is compared with the valve steel materials subjected to conventional heat treatment. The impact test is carried out in accordance with the ASTM E 23-02a standard. The results show an improvement of 23 % in the impact energy for the En 52 deep cryo-treated samples when compared to that of the conventionally heat treated samples. It is revealed that during cryogenic treatment fine platelets of martensite are formed from the retained austenite, and these platelets promote the precipitation of fine carbides by a diffusion mechanism during tempering.
Present investigations involve a systematic study on the machinability of austempered ductile irons (ADI) developed from four commercially viable ductile irons alloyed with different contents of 0, 0.1, 0.3 and 0.6 wt.% of Ni. The influence of Ni content, amount of retained austenite and hardness of ADI on machining behavior has been conducted systematically. Austempering heat treatment was carried out for 120 minutes at four temperatures- 270oC, 320oC, 370oC or 420oC, after austenitization at 900oC for 120 min. Milling tests were performed and machinability index, cutting forces and surface roughness measurements were used to evaluate the machinability. Higher cutting forces, lower machinability index and the poorer surface roughness of the samples austempered at lower temperatures indicated that austempering at higher temperatures resulted in better machinability. The machinability of samples austempered at 420oC, which contained higher fractions of retained austenite, was superior to that of samples austempered at lower temperatures, indicating that hardness is an important factor in assessing machinability in addition to high carbon austenite content. The ADI with 0.6% Ni, austempered at 420°C for 120 minutes, demonstrated best machinability.
The effect of different tempering temperatures and heat treatment times on the corrosion resistance of austenitic stainless steels in oxalic acid was studied in this work using conventional weight loss and electrochemical measurements. Typical 304 and 316 stainless steel samples were tempered at 150oC, 250oC and 350oC after being austenized at 1050oC for 10 minutes. These samples were then immersed in 1.0M oxalic acid and their weight losses were measured at every five days for 30 days. The results show that corrosion of both types of ASS samples increased with an increase in tempering temperature and time and this was due to the precipitation of chromium carbides at the grain boundaries of these metals. Electrochemical results also confirm that the 304 ASS is more susceptible to corrosion than 316 ASS in this medium. This is attributed to the molybdenum in the composition of the latter. The metallographic images of these samples showed non–uniform distribution of precipitated chromium carbides at the grain boundaries of these metals and unevenly distributed carbides and retained austenite phases which cause galvanic effects in the medium.