Investigation of the Effect of Thermal Cycling on the Magnetic and Mechanical Properties of Steels

Currently, throughout the world, thermal cycling processes are recognized as the most effective ways to increase the durability of metalworking tools. However, this promising technology has been little studied for structural steels. But the question of the influence of thermal cycling on magnetic properties (coercive force) has practically not been raised in the scientific literature. Therefore, in this work, the goal was to study the change in the coercive force and hardness of steels when using various thermal cycling schemes. During the experiments, steels of various purposes (structural and instrumental) and chemical composition were investigated. The following were studied: - pendulum, lowtemperature, medium-temperature, high-temperature thermal cycling and thermal cycling near the Curie temperature of cementite. All standard types of thermal cycling showed a drop in coercive force. Thermal cycling for carbon structural steel was carried out near the Curie point of cementite. The steel showed a jump in properties during the third cycle. A study of the structure revealed that partial spheroidization of pearlite occurred despite the fact that thermal cycling took place below the line of phase transformations. Research has shown that granular pearlite has a significantly greater coercive force than lamellar pearlite. The issue needs further research, and the phenomenon must find its practical application.