Some investigation on the cold deformation behaviour of sintered iron–0.8% carbon alloy powder preforms

Powder metallurgy (P/M) manufacturing route has wide industrial applications due to a host of techno-economic advantages. However, the production of highly dense product for structural application with pore free at open surface is a challenging endeavour for the investigators. Thus, present investigation pertains to describe cold deformation behaviour and to develop forming limits for iron–0.8% carbon sintered P/M steel preforms. Experiments were conducted on 0.40 and 0.75 initial aspect ratio of 86 ± 1% initial fractional theoretical densities under two different lubricant constraints namely, nil/no lubricant and graphite lubricant. The deformations were confined till the appearance of visible crack on the free surface of the deforming compacts. This aspect was quantized to evaluate the densification behaviour against compressive strain and to provide guidelines for introducing external constraints so as to produce components free from open surface pores.