A comparative study of the thermal and mechanical cutting influence on the cut-edge hardness of structural steels S355 and S1100

Abstract

Thermal and mechanical cutting process are commonly applied in manufacturing industries for making a specific size and shape of samples. The material properties of the heat-affected metal at the cut edge might be different from that of the parent metal. Hardness as a very important parameter for the assessment of material properties has been widely used in the design procedure. The vickers hardness test is a versatile method to measure material hardness in practice. In this study, the comparison of cut-edge hardness between the thermal and mechanical cutting process was performed on the structural steels S355 and S1100 by using the experimental method. Based on the measurements, the influence of Vickers test load on the magnitude and distribution of cut-edge hardness for laser cut samples of steels S355 and S1100 was clarified. Furthermore, the effects of cutting processes on the hardness were illustrated. Finally, the comparison between the distribution characteristic of the cut-edge hardness of steels S355 and S1100 were made.