PRECIPITATION-HARDENED LOW-CARBON HIGH-STRENGTH BAINITIC STEELS FOR MANUFACTURING OF FASTENERS

Design of the manufacturing chain for fasteners made of precipitation-hardened low-carbon high-strength bainitic steels was the objective of the paper. The choice of the material was based on the good performance of these steels in various applications. Compression tests at different temperatures (20–300°C) and different strain rates (0.1–10 s) were performed to provide data for identification of the flow stress model for the selected steels. Authors inverse algorithm was applied to determine coefficients in the flow stress model, which was implemented into the FE code Forge. Simulations of the whole manufacturing chain involving hot rolling of rods, controlled cooling, drawing and 4-step cold forging were performed. Physical simulations were performed on the Gleeble 3800 to validate material models, which were used in optimization of manufacturing chains for fasteners. Good predictive capability of the material models was confirmed. Final part of the paper presents an application of numerical modelling for the design of the best manufacturing technology. Since simulation of the one case of manufacturing requires very long computing times, application of classical mathematical optimization was not possible. Therefore, an approach known as variant optimization was applied. In this approach, trial and error method was combined with the knowledge of the expert. The objective was to improve the material flow in the forging and to improve the contact between the head of the fastener and the material being joined. Various variants of the technology were simulated and new technological parameters were proposed, which gave noticeable improvement of the objective function.