The influence of the vanadium content on the toughness and hardness of wear resistant high-alloyed Cr-Mo steel

Abstract

Characteristics of air hardening steel are high hardness and low impact toughness. In order to increase the impact toughness while retaining high hardness value, studies were performed. One of the ways to achieve this is the alloying of specified steel with vanadium and application of appropriate heat treatment. Vanadium affects the solidification process of these alloys by narrowing of the temperature interval of crystallization. In addition, vanadium formed V6C5 carbides that block the growth of austenitic dendrites and structure makes fine-grained. Vanadium which forms V6C5 carbides is partly distributed between present phases in the steel; carbide (Cr,Fe)7C3 and austenite. Also, the presence of vanadium can enables the formation of (Cr,Fe)23C6 carbide and its precipitation in austenite during the cooling process. In local areas around fine carbide particles, austenite is transformed into martensite. In other words, vanadium reduces the amount of remained austenite and thus improves hardenbility ot the steel. In this way, better technical characteristics of these steels are obtained.

Keywords

• vanadium
• impact toughness
• hardness
• microstructure