Optimisation of deep cryogenic treatment for 100cr6 bearing steel using the grey taguchi technique

Abstract

Deep Cryogenic treatment is a supplementary process to the conventional heat treatment for enhancing the mechanical properties of steels 100Cr6 bearing steel is widely used to make the plunger in the fuel injection pumps of diesel engines the most perplexing wear problem in the fuel injection pump is concerned with the plunger as this wear affects the engine performance significantly Deep cryogenic treatment is the process of cooling a material to extremely low temperatures soaking the material at that temperature for a prolonged period and then heating it back to room temperature in order to achieve enhanced mechanical and physical properties The purpose of this study is to optimise the deep cryogenic treatment process parameters of 100Cr6 bearing steel for hardness dimensional stability and wear resistance based on the Taguchi method with the grey relational analysis The deep cryogenic treatment parameters considered for the optimisation are the cooling rate, soaking time soaking temperature and tempering temperature with the quality targets of higher hardness better dimensional stability and maximum wear resistance