Effect of Heat Treatment on Mechanical Properties and Microstructure of Silicon Carbide Dispersed Mild Steel Fabricated Using Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) Process
摘要
The objective of this project is to identify whether a cheap material such as mild steel can be made harder and stronger by dispersing silicon carbide during the manufacturing of the part. 3D Metal printing is a revolutionary method of manufacturing complex parts faster, wide range of metallic materials and more efficiently with minimal wastage of metal. In this work, wire arc additive manufacturing is used to develop silicon carbide dispersed E70S1 mild steel. The silicon carbide dispersion is achieved by dispersing silicon carbide particles in the small groove of 1 mm width in steel matrix for by WAAM process to cover the grooves and disperse the silicon carbide particle. The process is repeated to get the 3D structure. The silicon carbide particles were found to be completely dissolved in the steel matrix after fabrication using WAAM. The effect of heat treatment on silicon carbon dispersed steel was performed by heating to austenitic temperature (i.e., 1000 °C) followed by an annealing, normalizing, and quenching process. Mechanical properties such as hardness test and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were performed on the various heat-treated samples to understand the changes that take place in the bulk of the metal due to heat treatment.