Investigating the effect of early cold work on the wear behavior of the high-manganese austenitic steel

In this study, the wear behavior of early hardened high-manganese austenitic steel with a nominal composition of Fe-17Mn-1.5Cr-0.6Si-1.2C were studied. The hardening was introduced via two methods of applying uniform hammer blows and shot pining. For this purpose, samples were casting in sand molds, were solutionized annealing at the temperature of 1100 ° C for 2 hours and then quenched in water. The initial work hardening was introduced via uniform hammer blows with the applied load of 100 tons and the strike numbers of 300 and 600. Beyond this, some samples were hardened via shot pining for 15 and 30 minutes. The hardness, tensile and impact tests were performed on the samples to investigate the mechanical behavior of the samples. Beyond this, the wear test with the wheels using dry sand was also performed on the samples. To study the micro structure of the samples optical microscopy (OM) were used. Moreover, the scanning electron microscope (SEM) were used to investigate the worn out surface of the samples. Results show that the hardness of the samples increases due to cold work from 290 HV to 653 HV and 698 HV for the hammer blow with 600 strikes and shot pining for 30 minutes, respectively. It was also revealed that the best wear behavior was shown in the samples hardened for 30 minus with shot pining due to higher surface hardness in these samples.