The necessity for highly abrasion-resistant materials in applications, for instance in the mining and cement industry, has lead to the development of metal matrix composites (MMC) produced by powder metallurgy (PM). So far, hot isostatic pressing (HIP) has been the usual method for producing low alloyed steel rods cladded with thick wearresistant layers of MMCs. HIP processes in this field, however, have strong limitations, such as furnace size, production costs, etc. Hot direct extrusion has recently been introduced as a novel process for the production of low alloy steel rods cladded with MMCs as high wear resistant coatings. [1] Its basic concept and the properties of the obtained materials are described elsewhere. [2,3] In contrast to HIP, the hot extrusion process allows the cost-efficient production of long products with full density of the coating and comparable properties. The influence of carbon diffusion and heat treatment on the mechanical properties has already been investigated for some of the materials presented in this contribution. [4,5] In this paper, four different combinations of substrate and wear-resistant coating were investigated. These are based on two tool steel powders, with or without hard particle (HP) addition, which are cladded on two different low-alloy steel substrate materials. The purpose of this work is to characterize the interface microstructure in these hot extruded cladded rods. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used and appears to be particularly well-suited for study in the influence of HP addition on the formation and distribution of chromium-and vanadium-rich carbides. Calculations performed using the program Dictra revealed a strong carbon enrichment of the cladding at the interface to the low-alloyed steel substrate. [6] Thus, EBSD was also employed to check for the presence of retained austenite.
Materials Processing and Experiments MaterialsA gas-atomized cold-work tool steel powder, X220CrVMo13-4 (1.2380), and a gas-atomized hot-work tool-steel powder, X40CrMoV5-1 (1.2344), were used as coating materials for the PM-MMCs. A hot-work steel bar, made of 55NiCrMoV7 (1.2714), and a non-alloy structural steel S355 with a diameter of 30 mm were chosen as the substrate materials for the cladded rods. The chemical composition of the tool steel powders and the substrates are given in Table 1. An earlier work gives more details about the steel powder 1.2380 as well as the substrate steel 1.2714 [4] . The steel powder X40CrMoV5-1 is based on the hot-work tool-steel 1.2344 exhibiting a high wear and thermal shock resistance in a temperature range of 400-700 8C, as well as a high level of toughness and ductility. It can be heat treated to a typical hardness of 50-56 HRC and contains virtually no carbides in its martensitic microstructure, depending on the heat treatment applied. The substrate made of the non-alloy structural steel S355 was selected due to its low cost, good weldability and cold formability, as well as a high fati...