Investigation and application of high strength

low alloy wear resistant cast steel

Z. Q. Jiang*
1
, H. G. Fu
1
, E. S. Yin
2
and Y. T. Tian
2
A kind of low alloy wear resistant cast steel that does not contain costly alloy elements such as
molybdenum, nickel, copper and vanadium has been successfully developed. By the refinement
with rare earth and titanium, the purification with blowing argon and improving the hardenability
with boron, the cast steel containing 0?250?45%C, 0?51?5%Si, 0?51?5%Mn, 0?51?5%Cr and a
small quantity of titanium, boron, rare earth, calcium and aluminium has high tensile strength,
impact and fracture toughness and excellent wear resistance. In the excavator bucket teeth,
crusher hammer and ball mill liner, low alloy wear resistant cast steel has 24 times longer
servicing life than that of Hadfield austenitic steel, and its production cost is equal to that of
Hadfield austenitic steel. The use of low alloy wear resistant cast steel is safe and reliable, and
there is no fracture and scaling in the use. The application of low alloy wear resistant cast steel
has good economic and social benefits.
Keywords: Cast wear resistant steel, Low alloy, Refinement, Purification, Wear resistance
Introduction
The wear of materials contains abrasive wear, impact
wear, adhesive wear, high temperature wear and
corrosive wear. Thereinto, foreign materials rubbing
against a metal part cause abrasive wear, which accounts
for 5560% of all wear on industrial metal components.
Abrasive wear is really a group of wear problems. It can
be divided into three main categories: low stress
scratching abrasion, high stress grinding abrasion and
gouging abrasion.
Martensitic steel is used widely as a kind of abrasion
wear resistant material. Usually, it has a higher
toughness than alloy white cast iron and better wear
resistance than austenitic steel.
13
Because Hadeld
austenitic steel does not workharden easily under mild
impact conditions, such as excavator bucket teeth,
crusher hammer and ball mill liner, martensitic steel is
especially more suitable to these conditions than
Hadeld austenitic steel. The excavator bucket teeth,
crusher hammer and ball mill liners made of martensitic
cast steel are becoming more competitive than those
made of Hadeld austenitic steel.
4,5
However, martensi-
tic wear resistant cast steel is usually employed with a
high alloy element content and has higher production
cost than that of Hadeld austenitic steel,
6,7
which
restricts the application of martensitic wear resistant cast
steel.
The aim of this work was to develop a new tape of
martensitic wear resistant cast steel that does not
contain costly alloy elements such as molybdenum,
nickel, copper and vanadium. Its production cost is the
same as that of Hadeld austenitic steel. By the
renement with rare earth and titanium, the purication
with blowing argon and improving the hardenability
with boron, low alloy martensitic wear resistant cast
steel has high strength and toughness and excellent wear
resistance, and has been successfully applied to many
industry areas.
Experimental
Smelting of low alloy wear resistant cast steel
Low alloy wear resistant cast steel was smelted in a
medium frequency induction furnace of capacity 500 kg.
Initial charge materials were clean steel scrap and pig
iron. Ferroalloys such as Fe61Cr, Fe75Si and Fe
82Mn were added to a slag free molten steel so as to
minimise the oxidation loss and the slag formation. The
melt was subsequently superheated to 16001620uC,
deoxidised with SiCa alloy and aluminium and
transferred into a preheated ladle. Rare earth, ferroti-
tanium and ferroboron whose grain sizes were 510 mm
were placed in the ladle before pouring the molten steel.
The chemical compositions of cast steel are listed in
Table 1.
Purification treatment of molten steel
The purication treatment of molten steel used blowing
argon process in the bottom of ladle. Argon was blown
through the porous air brick that was placed on the
bottom of ladle, as shown in Fig. 1. In the present study,
the ux of argon is 1020 L min
21
. The pressure of
argon is 520 MPa. Blowing argon time is 410 min.
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Zhengzhou Institute of
Aeronautical Industry Management, Zhengzhou 450015, China
2
Machinery Plant, Xinjiang Basteel Jiayu Corporation, Urumqi 830022,
China
*Corresponding author, email newroom@126.com
58
2011 W. S. Maney & Son Ltd.
Received 8 February 2010; accepted 31 May 2010
DOI 10.1179/175355510X12767031422841 Materials Technology 2011 VOL 26 NO 2
The stewing time after blowing argon is 58 min. The
distribution of inclusion in molten steel is shown in
Fig. 2. The inclusion in molten steel is decreased
obviously after blowing argon.
Cast and heat treatment of low alloy wear
resistant cast steel
After removal of any dross and slag, the molten steel
was poured at 14601480uC into the CO
2
silicate
moulds to produce excavator bucket teeth, crusher
hammer and ball mill liner. The samples measuring
microstructure and mechanical property were cut from
the ball mill liner with linear cutting machine. The
samples were heat treated at 850, 880, 920, 950, 980,
1020, 1050, 1080 and 1120uC respectively for 2 h and
followed by water cooling to the room temperature. The
tempering process of samples was heating at 150, 180,
200, 220, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, 500 and 550uC
respectively for 4 h, followed by cooling to the room
temperature in still air.
Mechanical property test
The tensile tests were performed on a universal material
testing machine according to ASTM E8,
8
and the
dimensions of specimens were W106130 mm. Three
identical specimens were tested, and the ultimate tensile
strength was determined from the loaddisplacement
diagrams. The average values from three test specimens
were reported here. Charpy unnotched impact tests were
performed at room temperature using a 300 J capacity
machine, and the dimensions of specimens were
10610655 mm. The fracture toughness tests were
performed according to ASTM E399,
9
and the dimen-
sions of specimens were 156306140 mm. The speci-
mens were precracked in fatigue at a DK level of
10 MPa m
1/2
to produce a 2 mm long sharp crack front.
After fatigue precracking, the specimens were loaded in
tension in a MTS New 810 testing device, and load
displacement diagrams were obtained with a clip gauge
in the knife edge attachment on the specimens. From
these loaddisplacement diagrams, P
Q
values were
calculated using the 5% secant deviation technique
according to ASTM E399.
9
K
Q
values were determined
using the standard stress intensity factor calibration
function for compact tension specimens. Since these K
Q
values satised all the requirements of a valid K
1c
test
according to ASTM E399,
9
these were all valid K
1c
values. The toughness values were the average of three
specimens. The hardness measurement of cast steel was
carried out using an HR-150A type Rockwell hardness
tester. The test load was 150 kg. At least seven
indentations were made on each sample to check the
reproducibility of the hardness data.
Results and discussion
Effect of quenching temperature on mechanical
properties
The effects of quenching temperature on tensile strength,
hardness, impact and fracture toughness of low alloy wear
resistant cast steel are shown in Fig. 3. The tensile strength
and hardness of cast steel increase with increasing
quenching temperature. When the quenching temperature
1 Diagrammatic sketch of blowing argon process (1: slag
blanket; 2: steel ladle; 3: molten steel; 4: porous air
brick)
Table 1 Chemical compositions of cast steel, wt-%
C Si Mn Cr Ti RE B Ca Al
0
.
250
.
45 0
.
51
.
5 0
.
51
.
5 0
.
51
.
5 ,0
.
20 ,0
.
20 ,0
.
015 ,0
.
15 ,0
.
15
2 Distribution of inclusion in molten steel a before and b after blowing argon
Jiang et al. High strength low alloy wear resistant cast steel
Materials Technology 2011 VOL 26 NO 2 59
exceeds 950uC, the increase in tensile strength and
hardness is not obvious. When the quenching temperature
exceeds 1050uC, the crystal grain will be coarsened and
retained austenite appears in the quenching structure, and
the tensile strength and hardness of cast steel begin to
decrease obviously, as shown in Fig. 3a.
Moreover, the uniformity of microstructure increases
with increasing quenching temperature, so the toughness
of cast steel increases. When the quenching temperature
is too high, the coarsening of crystal grain leads to the
decrease in impact toughness obviously. However,
higher quenching temperature makes some impurity
and harmful elements which induce brittleness dissolve
into the austenite, and can purify the grain boundary,
which decreases the nucleus forming crack and results in
the increases in fracture toughness.
10
Furthermore, although the critical stress s
c
for crack
propagation has a relationship with grain diameter d,
when grains are grown up, according to this equation by
Cottell
11
s
c
~s
i
zk
y
d
{1=2
(1)
The larger the diameters of grains, the lower the fracture
toughness. As a result of the integrated effect, the
fracture toughness has no obvious decrease until 980uC
and begins to decrease slightly when quenching tem-
perature exceeds 1020uC, as shown in Fig. 3b. This
shows that low alloy wear resistant cast steel quenching
at 920980uC has excellent mechanical properties. So the
quenching temperature of low alloy wear resistant cast
steel was chosen at 95010uC.
Effect of tempering temperature on mechanical
properties
The effects of tempering temperature on hardness and
impact toughness of low alloy wear resistant cast steel
that was quenched at 950uC were shown in Fig. 4.
Because there are no nickel, molybdenum, tungsten and
vanadium elements that can improve the temper
resistance of cast steel, the hardness of low alloy wear
resistant cast steel decreases obviously with increasing
tempering temperature when tempering temperature
exceeds 200uC. Moreover, there is an obvious temper
brittle zone tempering around 350uC. So the tempering
3 Effect of quenching temperature on a tensile strength and hardness and b impact and fracture toughness of low alloy
wear resistant cast steel
4 Effect of tempering temperature on mechanical proper-
ties of low alloy wear resistant cast steel
5 a macrostructure and b microstructure of cast steel quenching at 950uC
Jiang et al. High strength low alloy wear resistant cast steel
60 Materials Technology 2011 VOL 26 NO 2
temperature of low alloy wear resistant cast steel was
chosen at 20010uC.
Microstructures of low alloy wear resistant cast
steel
As cast structure of low alloy wear resistant cast steel
consists of pearlite, ferrite and a few martensite. The
quenching metallurgical structure is martensite, as
shown in Fig. 5. The transmission electron microscope
image of quenching sample shows that there are some
nanocrystalline austenite between martensitic lath
(Fig. 6), which can improve the toughness and plasticity
of low alloy wear resistant cast steel.
Application of low alloy wear resistant cast
steel
At present, low alloy wear resistant cast steel has been
successfully applied in the excavator bucket teeth,
crusher hammer and ball mill liner. It has good
workhardening effects because of the existence of
nanocrystalline austenite, and the hardness of worn
surface increases by 46 HRC. The servicing life of low
alloy wear resistant cast steel is 24 times longer than
that of Hadeld austenitic steel, and its production cost
is equal to that of Hadeld austenitic steel. The use of
high strength low alloy wear resistant cast steel is safe
and reliable; there is no fracture and scaling in the use.
The application of high strength low alloy wear resistant
cast steel has good economic and social benets.
Conclusions
1. Manganese, silicon and chromium are the main
alloy elements of low alloy wear resistant cast steel, and
it has excellent mechanical properties and wear resis-
tance by the refinement with rare earth and titanium, the
purification with blowing argon and improving the
hardenability with boron.
2. The tensile strength, impact toughness, fracture
toughness and hardness of low alloy wear resistant cast
steel quenching at 950uC and tempering at 200uC exceed
1550 MPa, 90 J cm
22
, 80 MPa m
1/2
and 52 HRC res-
pectively.
3. In the excavator bucket teeth, crusher hammer and
ball mill liner, low alloy wear resistant cast steel has 24
times longer servicing life than Hadfield austenitic steel,
and its production cost is equal to that of Hadfield
austenitic steel.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the financial support
for this work from the Fund of Aeronautic Science of
China (grant no. 2009ZF55008) and Science and
Technology Plan of Urumqi (grant no. Y09112004).
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Materials Technology 2011 VOL 26 NO 2 61