Predicting the Response of Powder Metallurgy Steel Components to Heat Treatment.

The goal of heat treating manufactured steel components is to enhance the characteristics of the metal so that the components meet pre-specified quality assurance criteria. However, the heat treatment process often creates considerable distortion, dimensional change, and residual stresses in the components. These are caused mainly by thermal stresses generated by a non-uniform temperature distribution in the part, and/or by transformation stresses due to the volume mismatch between the parent phase and product phases that may form by phase transformation. With the increasing demand for tighter dimensional tolerances and better mechanical properties from heat treated components, it is important for the manufacturer to be able to predict the ability of a component to be heat treated to a desired hardness and strength without undergoing cracking, distortion, and excessive dimensional change. Several commercial softwares are available to accurately predict the heat treatment response of wrought steel components. However, these softwares cannot be used to predict the heat treatment response of steel components that are made by powder metallurgy (PM) processes since these components generally contain pores which affect the mechanical, thermal, and transformation behavior of the material. Accordingly, the primary objective of this research is to adapt commercially available simulation software, namely DANTE, so that it can accurately predict the response of PM steel components to heat treatment. Additional objectives of the research are to characterize the effect of porosity on (1) the mechanical properties, (2) the heat transfer characteristics, and (3) the kinetics of phase transformation during heat treatment of PM steels