The Effect of Composition and Heat Treatment on Impact Toughness of Hadfield Steel

The effect of composition and heat treatment on impact toughness of Hadfield steel is investigated.Water quenching and additional aging was applied to 12Mn steel (two different compositions), 16Mn and 16MnV steels and instrumented Charpy pendulum is used to determine the total energy, as well as the energies for crack initiation and propagation to follow closely the effects of composition and heat treatment.Microstructure was examined as well, to get better insight into these effects.It was shown that 16Mn steels after water quenching and 12Mn steels after water quenching and aging have satisfactory impact toughness values.In any case, steels investigated here turned out to be sensitive to cracking, whereas their resistance to crack propagation was good enough.