Effect of Melting Temperature on the Wear Characteristics of Austenitic Manganese Steel

The practice in most manganese steel melting furnace is to raise the melting and pouring temperatures to 1500 0 C and above so as to enhance fluidity of the molten metal and ease removal of slag.High temperature promotes micro and macro carbide segregation of alloy elements and formation of embritting transformation products.The presence of segregation at the grain boundaries, acts as barrier to dislocation movement.This could be responsible for uneven, inconsistent wear rate and pattern of the steel.This paper studies the effect of pouring/melting temperature on the propensity of carbide segregation of austenitic manganese steel and by translation on the wear characteristics of jaw crushers.Austenitic manganese steel (AMS) was subjected to different heat/melt temperatures ranging from 1380 to 1550 0 C (H1-H3) in an induction furnace of 1-ton capacity.Samples obtained from the edge, middle and mounting section of the heat treated steel were examined by means of optical metallurgical microscope and the relative abundance of elements was determined by means of energy dispersed X-ray (EDX) elemental spectrometer.The results indicated high segregation of alloy elements at high melting temperatures.However, uniform dispersion of carbide particles in the base of the austenitic grains was noticed at pouring temperature range of 1400-1500 0 C.