Hot Forged Automotive
components
Introduction
• majority of hot-forged steel forgings are made using plain-carbon or
low alloy steels with a carbon content .
• yield an acceptable combination of strength, toughness and
forgeability.
• High strength forgings conventionally contain carbon levels of about
0.2-0.5 weight percent, that is allows forgings to be heat treated to
the required strength following the forging operation.
Literature Survey
• In early 70’s, use of medium carbon micro-alloyed steels for air-cooled hot
forgings started in Europe as well as USA.
• in order to avoid heat treatment and the concurrent problems.
• strength requirement was met primarily through precipitation in the ferrite –
pearlite matrix.
• microstructure however leads to lowering of toughness and such steels suffer
from poor weldability (reason may be alloy design because after air cooling,
microstructure obtained is ferrite-pearlite i.e. after continuous air cooling ,the
cooling curves go inside the pearlitic area).
• hence the use of such forgings were restricted to less critical components.
Problem with Heat treatment(i.e Quenching and tempering)
• quenching and tempering (Q+T), consumes considerable energy and adversely
affects productivity.
• the quenching operation may cause distortion in large forgings that in turn
would require further straightening involving expenses, apart from running the
risk of high residual stresses and at times, cracks in the components.
In many plants, the straightening operation is not followed by
a stress-relief annealing and therefore can lead to a lowering
in fatigue life ( due to presence of tensile residual stress ).
Solution : there should be presence of compressive stress
Literature survey on New Development in low
carbon bainitic structure
• new developments have taken place in the last 10 – 15 years .
• Japan, , precipitation hardening through Copper, in the bainitic matrix have led
to new air-cooled hot forgings, with high strength and reasonable toughness.
• In USA , patents to show the development of micro-alloyed steels that can be
used both for cold and hot forgings:
• low carbon bainite and fine grains of ferrite
• Wide spread not taken place because :
• cost of the alloying elements ,
• through controlled conditions of rolling of the bars from the billets,
• controlled rolling resulting in the desired fine microstructure for cold forging of large components.
• The focus of the current work being the development of non-heat treated Nb-
bearing high strength forge steel grades .
• use of micro-alloying in steels has assumed great significance as this has
assisted :
• eliminating costly heat-treatments
• introduced better combinations of properties such as strength, toughness, in many instances
improved machinability along with enhanced fatigue resistance
• these properties are recognized to be important.
• Microalloyed steels are typically low-to-medium carbon steels containing small
additions :
• Nb
• V
Either as individual addition or in combination
• Ti
• Al
present survey, focus would be on Nb-added steels
Solution
• Attempts to develop grades of steel that is free from some of these maladies.
• micro-alloyed, low carbon bainitic structures in the air-cooled conditions were
found to yield the optimum combination of strength and toughness.
• After USA developed low carbon bainite and fine grains of ferrite, appears to
be a need to develop alloys that are :
• more affordable and equally important
• requiring less stringent conditions of rolling ( from billets to bars),
• all these need to be done reducing the cost
• Producing ultra-fine ( < 1 micron ) grains of ferrite can improve the properties (
strength-toughness ) appreciably; and Nb-addition has the potential to
achieve the same.
The aim of current project
• developing new micro-alloyed low carbon compositions ,
• that would be eliminate the heat-treatment ( Q + T ),
• at same time equal / exceed the performance :
• strength,
• toughness,
• machinability,
• fatigue resistance and
• weldability.
The target properties of the forging with new composition are:
1. Yield strength = 500 MPa
2. Tensile strength = 750 MPa
3. Elongation = 25%
4. Retained austenite 60%
5. Charpy at 25 OC = 60 Joules min
• Use of micro-alloying in the forging steel
• potential to avoid a number of operations ,
• therefore eventually makes the forgings less expensive
• strength in this steel could be raised by increasing the V-content; however the
toughness fell at higher strength levels
• Nb added steel helps in the grain refinement and improved toughness
• Development of Nb-V steels in France ,Germany,Italy
• Development of V-Ti steels in Germany (shown that steel design can
produce useful strength –toughness combination),having a minimum
vanadium level of 0.10% is coupled with a high nitrogen level, and a
stoichiometric Ti:N ratio is maintained.
Application
• Nb –added steel used for :
• Connecting rod
• Weld yoke
• Universal joint couplings
Author’s
Sampei et al. - confirmed that Nb-added medium carbon steel bars (0.25 – 0.45% C) had a good strength-
toughness combination, in the controlled rolling condition
Hulka –controlled forgoing, conceptualized by Pawelski et al. in
1975 , and demonstrated that
finishing forging temperature in the
range 950 – 1100 K
a high load during forging at an
a better balance of tensile intermediate temperature shortened the
strength and toughness in Nb- life of the forming dies and therefore
bearing steels (0.32% C, 1.47% limits the use of controlled forging; this
Mn) than in conventional steel. process has not been adopted by the
industry
