With the development of society, every year there are increasing demands in the automotive industry on cost savings, environmental safety, reduction of raw material consumption, performance improvement, material life cycle and recycling of components. In this review, emphasis is given on ferrous and non-ferrous alloys, which are used as components, where both groups can be treated by deep cryogenic treatment (DCT). DCT has shown to increase hardness, tensile strength and wear resistance, reduce density of defects in crystal structure, improve toughness and corrosion resistance. Though, some researchers also reported results that showed no change in material properties, or even deterioration of material properties, when subjected to DCT. This additionally points out to lack of consistency and reliability of the DCT process, which is needed for its successful incorporation in automotive applications. However, to prove with certainty the resulting outcome on the material properties and knowledge about the reasons for the variation of this effect on metallic materials, further approach and testing with different variables should be conducted in the future. This review provides a synopsis of different approaches of DCT on different materials for automotive applications in order to indicate effects on the material performance during DCT.
The aim of the study was to evaluate the corrosion properties of three different grades of high-speed steel following a heat treatment procedure involving deep cryogenic treatment after quenching and to investigate how these properties are connected to the microstructure and hardness of the material. The hardness of steels was measured, and microstructural properties were determined through observation of the metallographically prepared steels using scanning electron microscopy. These studies were complemented corrosion evaluation by the use of corrosion potential measurement and linear polarization measurement of steels in a sodium tetraborate buffer at pH 10. The results showed that the deep cryogenic procedure of high-speed steel changed the microstructure and consequently affected the hardness of the investigated steels to different extents, depending on their chemical composition. Corrosion studies have confirmed that some high-speed steels have improved corrosion properties after deep cryogenic treatment. The most important improvement in corrosion resistance was observed for deep cryogenically treated high-speed steel EN 1.3395 (M3:2) by 31% when hardened to high hardness values and by 116% under lower hardness conditions. The test procedure for differentiating corrosion properties of differently heat-treated tool steels was established alongside the investigation.
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