Explosive Hardening of a Plain Carbon Steel Ck45 and Resulting Residual Stress State

Residual surface stresses in high manganese steels explosively hardened have been reported recently. These results, however, were which both tensile and compressive residual stresses were measured. The conclusion with respect of residual stress formation in the process of explosive hardening is not sufficiently reached. This paper describes two different types of explosive hardening procedure and residual surface stresses obtained by those procedures. Samples were prepared from a plain carbon steel Ck45 to deprive of complicated phase transformation during explosive hardening process and hardened by tangential detonation and high velocity impact. Residual surface stresses and the depth distributions of residual stress were measured by using an X-ray diffraction technique. As a result, residual surface stresses were obtained tensile in the case of tangential detonation and compressive in one of high velocity impact respectively.