Abstract
Carburized steel components are usually quenched from a hardening temperature, which lies in a complete austenitic phase, to room temperature. This leads to a microstructure comprised of mostly martensite plus bainite giving rise to unwanted heat-treatment-induced distortion. However, having a soft phase of ferrite dispersed throughout the microstructure can be quite effective in this regard. This is attributed to the capability of ferrite in accommodating the plasticity resulted from austenite-to-martensite transformation expansion. In the context of this work, it is demonstrated that how a proper selection of chemical compositions and a hardening temperature can greatly suppress the associated distortion . Hence, in order to systematically design a new steel alloy which fits to the above mentioned conditions, an ICME -based methodology has been employed. Thus, a series of calculations have been carried out by means of the well-known thermodynamic-based software Thermo-Calc® and the scripting language of Python. The austenite to ferrite phase transformation kinetics is also captured by the software DICTRA® generating a virtual TTT (Time-Temperature-Transformation) diagram which is subsequently utilized for further finite element simulations in the software Simufact.forming®. The carburizing process , the following phase transformations and the effect of the developed microstructure on the final distortion are simulated in macro-scale through Simufact.forming. The finite-element-based results of the Simufact.forming have in turn been enhanced by the results of the above-mentioned thermodynamic-based computational tools. At a later stage the simulation outcomes are experimentally validated by employing Navy C-Ring specimens.
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of this work provided by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the context of the Indo-German Science and Technology Center (IGSTC).
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© 2017 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
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Farivar, H., Rothenbucher, G., Prahl, U., Bernhardt, R. (2017). ICME-Based Process and Alloy Design for Vacuum Carburized Steel Components with High Potential of Reduced Distortion. In: Mason, P., et al. Proceedings of the 4th World Congress on Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME 2017). The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57864-4_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57864-4_13
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