Effect of Different Quenching Media on Microstructure, Hardness, and Wear Behavior of Steel Used in Petroleum Industries

Abstract

Medium carbon steel always used in most parts of the oil and gas industry, due to their cheap, simplemanufacturing and easy deformation. However, as-rolled medium carbon steel usually does not meetthe demands for many petroleum applications where high hardness and strength are needed; mainlybecause of their limitations in some mechanical features. Hence, many methods of thermal treatmenttechniques were adopted with a view to manipulate its structure and thus extend its scope ofapplications.This study focus on using a proper heat treatment to enhance medium carbon steelproperties.Quenching and tempering treatments are usually the end of any manufacturing process to productionof a machine component. However, the internal and residual stresses which generate during the heattreatments due to the non-uniform the quenched layer depth lead to distortion or cracked themachine component result in deteriorate the properties. Thus, the selection of optimum parameters ofthe quenching process is very important to ensure the achievement of the desired properties of themachine component. The main aim of this study is to get the optimal conditions for heat treatmentwhich brought the best combination of mechanical properties of medium carbon steel withouttempering treatment. Thus, in current study, an investigation of effects of polymer solution media onthe quenching process was carried out with samples made of medium carbon steel. The sampleswere quenched in four different concentrations (0, 10, 15, 20) % of polymer (polyalkylene glycol)solution and set of quenched samples were tempered at 400 oC for 1h. The resulting as-quenched andtempered microstructures were compared and evaluated. Mechanical properties (hardness and wearrate) of the samples were determined using suitable standards. The results show that the quenchedsamples in polymer solution with 10% polyalkylene glycol were brought the best combination ofmechanical properties as compared with other quenched and tempered samples.