A novel approach on production of carbon steels using graphene via powder metallurgy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Powder metallurgy (P/M) allows producing net or near net-shaped ferrous parts at lower temperatures compared to conventional casting. Carbon steels have a wide range of applications due to their comparatively low cost. So far, iron powders have been compacted and sintered with graphite to produce carbon steels via P/M. However, many studies have been published on the usage of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) in metal matrix composites, in recent years. To the best of our knowledge, there is no study on the investigation of the effect of GNPs on microstructural, mechanical, and tribological properties of ferrous materials. For this purpose, carbon steels containing different amounts of GNPs (0.25, 0.50, 0.75 wt.%) were fabricated via P/M. To better understand its effect, graphite was also used at the same contents. Results show that graphene reinforced samples had nearly 11%, 25%, 10% higher tensile strength, hardness, and wear resistance, respectively than graphite-reinforced samples at 0.25 wt.% reinforcement ratio. However, the graphene with a reinforcement ratio of more than 0.5 wt.% showed lower tensile properties nearly 15% compared to graphite-reinforced steels due to its agglomeration.