Hot Hardness Test Method for Characterization of High Temperature Alloys
ABSTRACT
July 22nd, 2024
C Paul Qiao
L.E. Jones Company
Menominee, MI 49858
Materials strength and bulk hardness are a function of temperature. For most engineering alloys, strength and hardness vary with temperature in a wide materials solid-state range. Materials strength and bulk hardness are closely correlated although the correlation is often not precisely linear.
Both material strength and bulk hardness are critical material properties of engineering alloys. While materials strength is a fundamental materials property obtained with standard compression/tensile test specimen for engineering component design, materials bulk hardness can be readily measured with an actual engineering component. Hence, bulk hardness has been commonly utilized as a materials testing method for product quality control. Hot hardness is the hardness attained at a specific temperature which can be used to assess potential performance of material and engineering component applied at elevated temperature. For instance, alloy’s potential wear and deformation behavior of IC and aerospace engine components can be estimated based upon its hot hardness property.
Lack of a standard hot hardness testing procedure from open publications indicates there is a need of developing an industry standard hot hardness measurement procedure with which the materials property among high temperature alloys can be adequately defined and directly compared. A hot hardness test procedure using Bruker TriboLab instrument has been developed at L.E. Jones Company (LEJ), recently. The LEJ bulk hardness test method has been successfully applied with a significantly number of high temperature alloys. The detailed testing procedure developed along with results obtained is discussed in this research article. It is intended to continuously enlarge the alloy hot hardness database recently established with substantial inclusion of other commercially available high temperature alloys.
See more of: Aeromat Technical Program