RESUMO
To improve the antibacterial properties of 304L austenitic stainless steel, copper is often added as an antibacterial agent, but the forming performance of the resulting material is poor, impacting its actual production and use. Therefore, this study investigated the influence of copper addition on the formability of 304L austenitic stainless steel with drawing, cupping and conical cup forming tests. Mechanical properties were determined with tensile and hardness tests. The microstructure and phase transformation were further characterized by metallographic microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction analysis. It was found that the addition of copper impaired the mechanical properties of 304L austenitic stainless steel, increased the stacking fault energy of the material and inhibited the occurrence of strain-induced martensite transformation, leading to a decrease in the formability of 304L austenitic stainless steel.
RESUMO
Powder metallurgy (PM) components are widely used in the auto industry due to the advantage of net-shape forming, low cost, and high efficiency. Still, usage of PM components is limited in the auto industry when encountering rigorous situations, like heavy load, due to lower strength, hardness, wear resistance, and other properties compared to wrought components due to the existence of massive pores in the PM components. In this study, through combining the powder metallurgy process and rolling process, the pores in the PM components were decreased and a homogenous densified layer was formed on the surface, which resulted in the enhancement of the strength, hardness, wear resistance, and other properties, which can expand its range of application. In this paper, we study the impact of different rolling feeds on the performance of the components' surfaces. We found that with the increase of the rolling feed, the depth of the densified layer increased.
