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Materials and Design 29 (2008) 251256
www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes
Short Communication
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Faculty, Sakarya University, Esentepe Campus, 54187 Sakarya, Turkey
Received 23 March 2006; accepted 21 November 2006
Available online 30 March 2007
Abstract
In the study, an investigation has been carried out for spheroidization of medium carbon steel (AISI 4140) used in forging industry.
Two dierent spheroidization processes were considered. The rst one was the annealing of normalized steel under A1 temperature for a
long time. The second was the annealing of hardened steel under A1 temperature for a long time. Specimens which were normalized and
hardened before the experiments were exposed to spheroidization annealing at 700 C temperature for ve dierent time periods as 4, 8,
12, 24 and 48 h. For evaluation of cold forgeability with dierent spheroidization annealing periods, the hardness, percentage of reduction in area in unaxial tension and reduction of area in notched tensile test were recorded. The results of reduction of area in notched
tensile test showed that the highest performance is reached with 12 h spheroidization time after being hardened.
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Cold forging has been widely used for forming of medium carbon steel machine parts. Medium carbon steels
have been usually softened by spheroidizing treatment
before applying cold forging processes. In this process,
the ductility of the materials is one of the most important
factors. The materials should be ductile enough in order
not to be damaged. Spheroidizing provides the needed ductility for cold forgeability [1,2]. These spheroidization treatments are long (1048 h). Due to longer process time
causing increase in material treatment cost, the shortest
time is aimed in industrial applications.
Usually, two types of spheroidization processes are used
in forging industry [1]. In the rst one termed intercritical
process, the spheroidization treatment consists of heating
the steel into the intercritical temperature region (740
760 C) for 26 h and then slowly cooling below the lower
critical temperature (700715 C) and holding at this temperature for 820 h before cooling to room temperature,
*
0261-3069/$ - see front matter 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2006.11.015
252
Temperature
A1
ef 2 lnd 0 =d f
Time
Temperature
A1
Time
Fig. 1. Spheroidization cycles (a) A typical intercritical annealing cycle.
(b) A possible subcritical annealing cycle.
253
ment up to 4 h, pearlites in the microstructure were coarsened and ngerprint structure was disappeared. Over this
period, the degree of spheroidization continued to increase
up to 48 h and primer ferrite grains were seen in all the
samples for all periods. However, ferrite grain size was
becoming ner with increase in time over 4 h. The spheroidization process is too slow. Fig. 9 shows that it was not
accomplished completely at the end of 48 h.
Figs. 1014 present the microstructures of AISI 4140
steel having dierent spheroidization time periods for hardened samples. Spheroidizing treatment of hardened AISI
4140 steel showed that the microstructure of the samples
was gaining a spheroidized microstructure with in a short
treatment time. However, over a period of 12 h grain
growth was seen clearly.
254
255
Normalized
Hardened
650
Brinell hardness
550
450
350
250
150
0
10
20
30
40
50
Spheroidization time, h
Fig. 15. Hardness decrease during spheroidization of AISI 4140 steels.
Fig. 13. Microstructure of AISI 4140 steel taken from spheroidizing
treatment after 24 h at 700 C for hardened specimen.
Hardened
70
Normalized
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0
10
20
30
40
50
Spheroidization time, h
Fig. 16. Change of ductility of AISI 4140 steel during spheroidization.
256
Table 1
The results of notched tensile tests
Spheroidiziation time periods (h)
Fracture strain, ef
4
8
12
24
48
Normalized
Hardened
0.16
0.43
0.45
0.46
0.50
0.56
0.02
0.53
0.57
0.60
0.59
0.54
Normalized
Hardened
Cold forgeability
0.7
0.6
References
0.5
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0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0
10
20
30
40
50
Spheroidization time. h
Fig. 17. Change of cold forgeability of AISI 4140 steel during
spheroidization.
4. Conclusion
It was proven that the spheroidization process recovers
the cold forgeability.