5th International High Manganese Steel Conference - HMNS 2022

A decarbonized energy system is underway worldwide. The Paris Agreement was adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 in Paris. Its goal is to keep global warming “below 2 °C above preindustrial levels, and to pursue effort to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 °C.” To achieve this long-term temperature goal, big changes are needed in the ways energy is produced, distributed and storage, as well as the decrease of fossil fuels and the use of renewable energies. In the future, electric vehicles will be of fundamental importance in the transport sector in order to be able to achieve these climate targets. Electrical drives are characterized by their high efficiency and enable the use of electrical power from renewable energies. The present work is focused on the development of a novel high-Mn steel with high strength and non-magnetic which will be used for components in the e-cars. This new steel is based in the system Fe-15Mn-4Al-0.6C (wt.%) and Ni, Cu and V were added to study their effect in the mechanical and physical properties. Four heats were produced, hot rolled and heat treated. Microstructure, mechanical and physical properties were studied after quenching and annealing treatment. The four heats show a 100 % austenitic microstructure without any detrimental phases, like ferrite and martensite. The new steels Fe-15Mn-4Al-0.6C allowed with Cu and V present the best combination of tensile strength, higher than 700 MPa, ductility and high toughness. These two alloys have a potential in terms of material technology, but also represents an attractive solution from an economic point of view compared with other non-magnetic steels.