Brittle fracture behaviors of large die holders used in hot die forging

Brittle fracture of large forging equipment usually leads to catastrophic consequences. To avoid this kind of accident, the brittle fracture behaviors of a large die holder were studied by simulating the practical application. The die holder is used on the large die forging press, and it is made of 55NiCrMoV7 hot-work tool steel. Detailed investigations including mechanical properties analysis, metallographic observation, fractography, transmission electron microscope (TEM) analysis and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) were conducted. The results reveal that the material generated a large quantity of large size polyhedral M₂₃ C₆ (M: Fe and Cr mainly) and elongated M₃ C (M: Fe mainly) carbides along the martensitic lath boundaries when the die holder was recurrently tempered and water-cooled at 250^◦ C during the service. The large size carbides lead to the material embrittlement and impact toughness degradation, and further resulted in the brittle fracture of the die holder. Therefore, the operation specification must be emphasized to avoid the die holder being cooled by using water, which is aimed at accelerating the cooling.