Effect of Multiple Impacts on the Deformation of Wear-Resistant Steels

More durable materials enable reducing the downtime and maintenance costs by decreasing the number of replaced core components in various industrial applications. In this study, the behavior of three wear-resistant quenched martensitic steel grades and the S355 structural steel was examined in controlled impact conditions. The materials' impact behavior was investigated by several methods including residual stress measurements and electron backscatter diffraction. For all studied materials, the size and depth of the impact marks correlate via a logarithmic function to the number of impacts mostly due to work hardening. The underlying deformation behavior of the material depends on the mechanical properties and microstructure of the material. At high impact counts, softer martensitic steel was found to behave differently when compared to the other tested materials as it underwent severe changes in its microstructure and exhibited marked hardening.