Interpreting H13 steel wear behavior for austenitizing temperature, tempering time and temperature

Abstract

Hot-working die steel should possess good high temperature strength, tempering resistance, ductility and reasonable cost. Thus, H13 is widely used for forging, extrusion and die casting. Resistance to surface wear of hot working die steel plays an important role in imparting good finish to the products. The properties required of hot die steel for a given application can be obtained by controlling heat treatment parameters which produces major changes in microstructure. This paper intends to find the impact of austenitizing temperature, tempering temperature and tempering time on the wear behavior of H13 die steel. After heat treating samples at austenitizing temperature of 1020, 1040 and 1060 $$^{\circ }$$ C; tempering temperature 540, 560 and 580 $$^{\circ }$$ C; tempering time 1, 2 and 3 h, experimentation on pin-on-disc tribotester is done to measure the H13 die steel sliding wear and coefficient of friction. Using Box–Behnken design a response surface method model is developed to find the impact of above heat treatment parameters and the adequacy of model is verified through the analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique. The optimized heat treatment set predicted by desirability function approach is verified experimentally and the results are found close to the predicted results.