Properties Of PM Steel Alloyed Through The Masteralloy Route - A Comparison To Conventional PM Grades

Abstract

The PM steel industry is heading for radical changes, especially concerning the mobility sector. This is accompanied by challenges: New markets for the PM industry should be acquired, and with that, improved materials are mandatory for the future. On the other hand, well established alloying elements such as Cu and Ni undergo critical price fluctuations and are increasingly considered as strategic materials. Alloying elements well known in ingot metallurgy, such as Cr, Mn and Si, are attractive in their effects but limited in PM applications due to their high O affinity. The masteralloy (MA) route using MAs containing Fe, C, Si, Mn and / or Cr is a promising technique making these alloying elements available for the PM route. In this study, PM steels alloyed with MA are compared to commercially available pre-alloyed and diffusion alloyed powders in terms of microstructure, hardness, young’s modulus, flexural strength and impact energy.

Using MA and plain Fe powder combines the good compressability of the base powder and an alloying technique suiteable for oxygen affine elements. Sintered under right conditions these new materials show competitive properties to commercial powder grades, without any Ni, Cu and Mo.