Impact Behavior of Cryogenically Treated En 52 and 21-4N Valve Steels

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.





References:
[1] A. Bensely, D. Senthilkumar, D. Mohan Lal, G. Nagarajan, and A. Rajadurai, "Effect of cryogenic treatment on tensile behavior of case carburized steel-815M17”, Materials Characterization, 58, 2007, pp. 485-491.
[2] Paolo Baldissera and Cristiana Delprete, "Effects of deep cryogenic treatment on static mechanical properties of 18NiCrMo5 carburized steel”, Materials and Design, 30 (5), 2009, pp. 1435-1440.
[3] D. Das, A. K. Dutta, V. Toppo and K. K. Ray, "Effect of Deep Cryogenic Treatment on the Carbide Precipitation and Tribological Behavior of D2 Steel”, Materials and Manufacturing Processes, 22 (4), 2007, pp. 474-480.
[4] D. Mohan Lal, S. Renganarayanan and A. Kalanidhi, "Cryogenic treatment to augment wear resistance of tool and die steels”, Cryogenics 41, 2001, pp. 149-155.
[5] A. Joseph Vimal, A. Bensely, D. Mohan Lal and K. Srinivasan, "Deep Cryogenic Treatment Improves Wear Resistance of En 31 Steel”, Materials and Manufacturing Processes, 23 (4), 2008, pp. 369-376.
[6] M. Preciado, P.M. Bravo and J.M. Alegre, "Effect of low temperature tempering prior cryogenic treatment on carburized steels”, Journal of Materials Processing Technology 176, 2006, pp.41-44.
[7] Jiang Yong, Chen Ding, Chen Zhenhua and Liu Junwei, "Effect of Cryogenic Treatment on the Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of AZ31 Magnesium Alloy”, Materials and Manufacturing Processes, 25 (8), (2010) 837-841.
[8] Wayne Reitz and John Pendray, "Cryoprocessing of materials: A review of current status”, Materials and manufacturing processes, 16 (6), 2001, pp. 829–840.
[9] S. Harish, A. Bensely, D. Mohan Lal, A. Rajadurai and B. Gyongyver Lenkey, "Microstructural study of cryogenically treated En 31Bearing steel”, Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 209 (7), 2009, pp. 3351-3357.
[10] P. Johan Singh, S.L. Mannan, T. Jayakumar and D.R.G. Achar, "Fatigue life extension of notches in AISI 304L weldments using deep cryogenic treatment”, Engineering Failure Analysis, 12, (2), 2005, pp. 263-271.
[11] M. Arockia Jaswin and D. Mohan Lal, Optimization of the Cryogenic Treatment Process for En 52 Valve Steel Using the Grey-Taguchi Method, Materials and Manufacturing Processes, 25 (8), 2010, pp. 842 -850.
[12] Xia Yong, Zhang Zhenren, Shang Binliang, Guo Mingfang and Zhang Yi, "Fault diagnosis for ICE based on image processing and neural networks”, Transactions of Chinese Society for Internal Combustion Engines, 19 (4), 2001, pp. 356–360.
[13] ASTM International, "Standard test methods for notched bar impact testing of metallic materials”, E 23 – 02a, 2004, pp. 158-184.
[14] Yushu Wang. "Introduction to engine valvetrains”, SAE International, United States of America, 2007.
[15] Alok Nayar. "The steel handbook”, Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi, India, 2007.