Effect of Different Quenching Media on Microstructure, Hardness, and Wear Behavior of Steel Used in Petroleum Industries

Abstract

Medium carbon steel always used in most parts of the oil and gas industry, due to their cheap, simple
manufacturing and easy deformation. However, as-rolled medium carbon steel usually does not meet
the demands for many petroleum applications where high hardness and strength are needed; mainly
because of their limitations in some mechanical features. Hence, many methods of thermal treatment
techniques were adopted with a view to manipulate its structure and thus extend its scope of
applications.This study focus on using a proper heat treatment to enhance medium carbon steel
properties.
Quenching and tempering treatments are usually the end of any manufacturing process to production
of a machine component. However, the internal and residual stresses which generate during the heat
treatments due to the non-uniform the quenched layer depth lead to distortion or cracked the
machine component result in deteriorate the properties. Thus, the selection of optimum parameters of
the quenching process is very important to ensure the achievement of the desired properties of the
machine component. The main aim of this study is to get the optimal conditions for heat treatment
which brought the best combination of mechanical properties of medium carbon steel without
tempering treatment. Thus, in current study, an investigation of effects of polymer solution media on
the quenching process was carried out with samples made of medium carbon steel. The samples
were quenched in four different concentrations (0, 10, 15, 20) % of polymer (polyalkylene glycol)
solution and set of quenched samples were tempered at 400 oC for 1h. The resulting as-quenched and
tempered microstructures were compared and evaluated. Mechanical properties (hardness and wear
rate) of the samples were determined using suitable standards. The results show that the quenched
samples in polymer solution with 10% polyalkylene glycol were brought the best combination of
mechanical properties as compared with other quenched and tempered samples.