Carburising PM-components at low and high pressure

Purpose and goal

This project has demonstrated how sintered and dense materials can be carburised in the HIP-unit. It has experimentally been shown how it is possible to controll the carburisation process by a variation of parameters such as: chemistry of materials, atmosphere, carburisation time, and amount of porosity. By combining experiments with simulations it is possible to optimise this process.

Expected results and effects

This project has demonstrated how it is possible to include several different metallurgical processes in the same steg: compaction, carburisation, and hardening. The powder metallurgical route has many advantages with near-net-shaping, and the suggested process has some additional positive effects: decreased lead time by included several processes in the same step, and less energy due to eliminating the need of reheating the material.

Planned approach and implementation

By a systematic variation of processparameters the process has been optimised. The optimisation has been made with support of calculations, mainly based on thermodynamic calculations in order to capture the influence of chemistry on carburisation. The influence of carburisation time has been captured by kinetic simulations using tools such as Dictra. However, it is more difficult to capture the role of porosity on carburisation using modelling, and further work is recommended.