Influencia de la transformación austenita-martensita en la estabilidad dimensional de un nuevo acero para herramientas aleado con niobio (0,08%) y vanadio (0,12%)

Austenite-martensite transformation influence on the dimensional stability of a new experimental tool steel alloyed with niobium (0.08% wt.) and vanadium (0.12% wt.) has been studied. The dimensional stability of this new steel was compared with the dimensional stability of commercial steel, after and before two thermal treatments, T1 (860 °C) and T2 (900 °C). The thermal treatments consisted on heating and cooling, at 1 atmosphere of pressure, in N 2 atmosphere furnace, fol lowing by heating in a conventional furnace at 180 °C during 1 hour. Initially, the experimental steel composition and Ac 1 and Ac 3 transformation temperatures were determined by glow-discharge luminescence (GDL) and dilatometric tests, respectively, in order to select the austenization temperatures of T1 and T2 treatments. After hardness measurement, the microstructure of both steels was characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and optical metallography, before and after of T1 and T2 thermal treatments. Finally, longitudinal and angular dimensional stability analyses were realized for both commercial and experimental steels. After a contrastive hypothesis analysis, the results showed that the longitudinal relative variation of the experimental steel calculated was around 0.2% and the angular relative variation was not significant