A Study on Forging Characteristic of Non-Heat Treated Micro-Alloyed Steel Using Finite Element Analysis

Micro-alloyed steels(MA steels) for cold forging was developed to replace the usual quenched and tempered steel. MA steels have several advantages over the conventional quenched and tempered carbon steels. First of all, energy consumption could be lowered due to the elimination of spherodizing annealing and quenching/tempering heat treatment. Also, bending during quenching could be avoided when MA steels are applied for manufacturing of long fastener parts. However, larger amount of load is exerted on the dies compared than in the case of conventional mild steels, which might lead to the earlier fracture of dies, when MA forging steels are applied in forging practice. Therefore, die lift could be a critical factor to determine whether HA forging steels could be widely applied in cold forging practice. In the present study, authors have investigated the forging characteristics of non-heat treated micro-alloyed steel by using a series of experimental and numerical analyses. Firstly, microstructural features and its effect on the deformation behavior have been studied. Numerical analysis has been done on the forging of guide rod pin to investigate for the optimization of forging process and die stress prediction.