Effect of Heat Treatment on Mechanical Properties of AISI 4147 Spring Steel
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3rd International Conference on Mechanical, Automotive and Materials Engineering (ICMAME'2013) April 29-30, 2013 Singapore Effect of Heat Treatment on Mechanical Properties of AISI 4147 Spring Steel S. S. Sharma, K. Jagannath, C.Bhat, U. Achutha Kini, P. R. Prabhu, Jayashree P. K and Gowrishankar M. C Abstract - Today steel is the most important resource in this The combination of heating and cooling operations applied to industrialized world. It forms the basic building material of today’s a metal or alloy in the solid state is termed as heat treatment. structure. Moreover steels with large chromium and vanadium The high temperature phase austenite in steel has the property percentage can be used as spring steels which form the suspension to transform into variety of room temperature phases like system. Prevention of wear and increase in steel life depends coarse pearlite, bainite & martensite depending upon the principally on the design and operation on the component, but providing some pre-use treatment on steel can also improve the cooling cycle [1-3]. These phases may be the decomposition quality to a great extent. It has been seen that most of the study products like ferrite & cementite or it may be super saturated focuses on the experimental testing of the steel component and very solid solution. Depending upon the plate thickness and few focuses on the material testing and improving its properties interlammer spacing between ferrite and cementite phases in beforehand. One of the processing routes to alter the properties is pearlite, the property of steel can be altered. The plate heat treatment. Nearly 90% of the springs are used in heat treated thickness and interlammer spacing between ferrite and conditions. The major requirement for the conventional spring steel is cementite is larger, coarser is the pearlite and ferrite, hence toughness, strength & hardness. In this view, it is proposed to study ductility increases. This is possible by slow cooling of the the mechanical and tribological properties of AISI 4147 (EN47) austenitic phase to room temperature, accordingly the spring steel with different heat (thermal) treatments like normalizing, hardening and tempering. All heat treatments are carried out in treatment is known as annealing [4-7]. atmospheric condition. Hardening treatment improves hardness of the If the austenitic phase is cooled at a slightly faster rate, so material, a marginal decrease in hardness value with improved that the decomposition of austenite by the eutectoid reaction is ductility is observed in tempering. Hardening and longer duration possible to form medium or fine pearlite with increased weight tempering show better wear resistance compare to other heat percentage of eutectoid mixture (pearlite), the treatment is treatments. Both mild and severe wear regions are observed. known as normalizing [8-11]. Here the degree of dispersion of Generally mild wear region is observed above 5 hours of continuous ferrite and cementite in pearlite increases to improve the running of the specimen. Microstructural analysis shows the machinability with finer grain size. The normalized steel existence of pearlitic structure in as bought & normalized specimens, contains nearly 50 wt % of pearlite and 50 wt % of lath martensitic structure in hardened specimen. proeutectoid ferrite. If the austenitic phase is cooled in such a way that the cooling rate is greater than or equal to critical Keywords – tempering, hardness, heat treatment, normalizing, toughness cooling rate (CCR), the transformed phase is termed as I. INTRODUCTION martensite. It is supersaturated single phase with body centered TEELS can be subjected to variety of conventional heat tetragonal (BCT) structure. The BCT structure has got a c/a treatments like normalizing, hardening and tempering. ratio higher with more trapped carbon in the lattice. So S hardness and strength increase with considerable amount of thermal stresses because of quenching severity. To decrease S. S. Sharma, Professor, Department of Mechanical & Manufacturing the c/a ratio of BCT martensite, to improve toughness, to Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal - 576104 (Ph: 0820 2925473; e-mail: [email protected]). convert retained austenite into stable phases; to saturate the K. Jagannath, Professor, Department of Mechanical & Manufacturing non-equilibrium BCT martensitic structure and to minimize the Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal - 576104 (Ph: 0820 thermal stresses induced during hardening, tempering 2925473; e-mail: [email protected]). treatment is given. Depending upon the tempering temperature U. Achutha Kini, B Professor, Department of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal - and duration, the improvement in toughness is possible with 576104 (Ph: 0820 2925473; e-mail: [email protected]). the sacrifice of hardness and strength. Because of high P. R. Prabhu, Asst. Professor - senior scale, Department of Mechanical & brittleness, as quenched spring steels are seldom used for Manufacturing Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal - practical applications [12, 13]. By tempering process, the 576104 (Ph: 0820 2925463; e-mail: [email protected]). Jayashree P. K, Asst. Professor - selection scale, Department of properties of quenched steel could be modified to improve its Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology, impact resistance. During tempering the resulting Manipal - 576104 (Ph: 0820 2925473; e-mail: [email protected]). microstructure contains bainite or epsilon carbide in a matrix Gowrishankar M. C, Asst. Professor, Department of Mechanical & of ferrite depending on the tempering temperature. Manufacturing Engineering, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal - 576104 (Ph: 0820 2925463; e-mail: [email protected]). Spring steels are used in the quenched and tempered C. Bhat, Professor & Head, Department of Mechatronics Engineering, condition which gives optimum strength, toughness and Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal - 576104 (Ph: 0820 2925441; e- vibration damping. The change in microstructure and strength mail: [email protected]). 102 3rd International Conference on Mechanical, Automotive and Materials Engineering (ICMAME'2013) April 29-30, 2013 Singapore after the heat treatment process depends on the cooling rate obtained during quenching. Due to operational safety, springs have to meet increasing performance requirements, which concern mechanical properties as well as fatigue strength. Today oil quenched and tempered springs are widely used for heavy duty spring where high mechanical properties are the main design driver [14-17]. Major requirements of the spring steel are high yield strength, high proportional limit, and high fatigue strength. These desirable properties of spring can be Fig. 4 Hardness Test Specimen (mm) achieved firstly by a higher carbon content or with suitable alloying elements, and secondly by heat treatment. Steel springs are used in hard, high strength condition. To attain B. Heat Treatment Procedure these properties springs are hardened and tempered. Table I The Electric furnace is used for heating the specimen to the shows the chemical composition of the AISI 4147 steel used in austenitic state. All specimens are prepared from as bought this study. steel and subjected to three types of heat treatments such as TABLE I AISI 4147 STEEL COMPOSITION normalizing, hardening and tempering and compared with as Element % Wt. Element % Wt. bought specimen. Three specimens each for tensile, impact, Carbon 0.496 Sulphur 0.031 wear, microstructure and hardness are used for the analysis in Silicon 0.270 Iron 97.30 respective treatments. First set consisting three specimens in Manganese 0.620 Nickel 0.133 respective test is subjected to normalizing and another three Molybdenum 0.015 Aluminium 0.021 sets are hardened. Out of three sets hardened, one set is Vanadium 0.154 Chromium 0.800 tempered at 300oC for one hour and the second set is tempered at the same temperature for five hours followed by slow II. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS cooling in air. All specimens for normalizing and hardening are heated for two hours at 900oC and normalized specimen is A. Specimen preparation cooled in air. SAE 30 oil is used as quenchant. The average Standard specimens are prepared with the required value of three readings is considered for analysis. dimensions for tensile, impact, hardness, and wear tests. The C. Testing shape and size of standard dimension chosen for the tests are shown in Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4. The heat treated specimens are further subjected to mechanical tests like, tensile (Computer controlled tensometre), impact (Charpy), wear (Pin on disc), hardness (Rockwell) and metallography (Metallurgical microscope). In wear test, diameter of wear track is 88mm, test duration is 5 hours and rpm of the disc is 200 for each specimen. For metallography, specimen is polished with series of emery papers of 100, 200, 300 and 400 micron size and etched with Nital. Fig. 1 Tensile Test Specimen (mm) III. RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS A. Micro structural Analysis: The micro structures of as bought, normalized, hardenedand tempered specimens are shown in Figures 5, 6, 7, and 8 respectively. As bought specimen shows well defined pearlitic phase with lamellar packing of ferrite and cementite particles and coarse grains of ferrite and pearlitic colonies. Also there is no rupturing of grains or no alignment of