Quenching Simulation of PM Coated Tools

HIP cladding is a powder metallurgical coating technique used in the production of wear parts and tools. In many cases the composite components consist of carbide-free hot-work steel as base material and wear resistant carbide-rich PM cold-work steel as coating material. To ensure operativeness a heat treatment matched to the substrate and coating material is required. Dissimilar phase transformation behaviour and different thermal expansion coefficients of layer and substrate entail inner stresses affecting the transformation kinetics in turn. In order to get a deeper insight into these effects Finite Element simulation tools are used. On the one hand, the transient heat conduction problem of the quenching process has to be solved. Non-linear boundary conditions and phase transformation of both, substrate and layer are considered. On the other hand, the mechanical response is calculated. The overall aim of the investigation is an improvement of common heat treatment techniques used for HIP cladded wear parts.