Forming Mechanism of High-Speed Cold Roll Beating of Spline Tooth

Abstract

The spline tooth of ASTM 1045 was fabricated by high-speed cold roll-beating (HSCRB) process at room temperature. Microhardness of the spline tooth was examined by a nanoindenter. The grains and misorientation angle distributions were measured by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). The results showed that the microhardness was improved up to 1280 μm deep from the surface of the spine tooth. The microhardness and the grain sizes gradually decreased in the direction away from the surface. On the surface, the fraction of ultrafine grains increased up to about 90%, and the average grain diameter (which was ∼0.56 µm) decreased by 71.4%. The model of grain evolution during HSCRB process is proposed in this work. New grains appear first on the boundaries of the elongated grains within numerous subgrains. The elongated grains are refined as a result of subgrain rotation. By analyzing the HSCRB technical principle, we concluded that the process parameters affect the refinement degree of studied steel by determining beating pass, beating pass interval time, and strain rate.