Using the Ultrasonic Nondestructive Methods for Prediction of Mechanical Properties of AISI 4140 Alloy Steel

Abstract

Achieving the mechanical properties of steels after various manufacturing and heat treatment processes is significant and essential. In production lines, after producing the specific and standard samples, mechanical properties have been measured by destructive processes which cause waste of cost and time. In addition, destructive techniques cannot detect the miniscule changes made in mechanical properties of steel during heat treatment processes. In this paper, the ultrasonic nondestructive method is used for accurate measuring the elastic properties of AISI 4140 steel samples which are heat treated at different levels. Each sample has its specific microstructure and hardness due to the heat treatment process it has gone through. The elastic properties of each sample are obtained by measuring the velocities of longitudinal and shear waves in each sample. On the other hand, for detecting the error resources and evaluation of precision of measuring method, uncertainty analysis is performed. A good agreement is noted between results obtained from ultrasonic measurements and available information in reference tables and it was shown that the ultrasonic technique can measure the elastic properties of AISI 4140 samples with high accuracy. In sum, achieved results show that the maximum value of mechanical properties belongs to the microstructure with higher hardness and with decreasing the hardness these properties, also, decline.