PetroMat

The work is intended to focus the attention on different aspects of sinterhardening, starting from the main reason to use such a process to the final characterisation of produced samples. Sintehardening allows the production of high apparent hardness parts; the process is rather attractive for components difficult to be quenched because of their dimensions. Admixed alloys, diffusion alloyed mixes, prealloyed ones or hybrid alloys can be used as starting powders, each having positive and negative aspects.

In the last decade the gold industry has been subject to a high degree of automation and to a high development in terms of technological devices. However what seems to be lacking is the approach oriented towards the engineering of the sector, intended as a synchronised study of the material characteristics, related to the process and to the production techniques.

The evolution of friction and wear of Fe-2Mn-0.85Mo-0.5C steels sintered under two different conditions was investigated during dry sliding tests. Irregular behaviour of the friction coefficient was observed and analysed by means of fractal geometry methods. It was proven that the friction coefficient traces had the property of fractal curves. In general, the fractal dimension of friction coefficient trace tended to increase with increasing wear rate.

This work aims at studying the possibility of optimising the heat treatment cycles of parts produced using the New Rheocasting process in order to reduce the total cost of the operation, attaining good mechanical properties for high performance parts. The mechanical properties and the microstructure features of the considered A 356 alloy and the relative produced parts have been analysed and studied on samples machined both from the as cast and from the heat treated compomnents.