Abstract

The article deals with the investigation of plastic deformations of carburized medium carbon stainless steel after quenching and tempering. After carburization the specimens were heated at 1020 °C temperature and then air quenched. At the process of air quenching the specimens were bent within the temperature dropping interval approximately from 550 °C to room temperature. The bending caused tension or compression in different parts of the specimen, so interstitial distortion was formed. As the bending stress was much lower than the yield stress, the specimen didn’t bend during the first minutes of experiment, and then started bending during the martensitic transformation (transformation plasticity effect). The curved quenched specimens then were tempered at temperatures 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 and 700 °C for 1 hour and the deflection of specimen after each tempering was measured.

The results showed different influence of tension and compression on transformations occurring in steel during quenching and tempering. The tempering temperature effect on self-deformation of curved specimen was revealed.