Determinação da espessura de camadas duras em aços por técnicas magnéticas

Abstract

The process most commonly used for surface hardening of steels is annealing. Using conventional thermal treatments, hardened layers were formed on SAE 1020 and SAE 8620 steel by diffusion of carbon into the surface. The determination of the thickness of the hardened layer in steels is traditionally done by destructive techniques. This work has as main objective a determination of the thicknesses of the hardened layers by magnetic measurements, measurements of Barkhausen noise, which is a non-destructive method. However, for comparison the thicknesses of the layers were measured by traditional destructive techniques. Barkhausen noise and hysteresis loops were measured and both the RMS Barkhausen pulse envelope and the fast Fourier transform (FFT) were obtained from numerical calculations. The areas under the Barkhausen pulses may be used for the construction of a calibration curve to determine a case depth of the hard layer. The amplitude of the FFT was obtained as a function of frequency, and has been associated with distance from the surface for each sample using the classical equation for the penetration distance of electromagnetic waves in a metal. Finally a normalized power ratio (IPN) was obtained and used for correlatation with the thickness of the surface layer of hardened samples. The IPN is discussed in this paper in relation to the microstructure of the hardened layer and the core sample. Several samples were treated at temperatures of liquid nitrogen to transform retained austenite into martensite. Measurements of magnetic properties were consistent with an increase in the martensite content of the microstructure.