Prominence of Hadfield Steel in Mining and Minerals Industries: A Review

High manganese austenitic steel, popularly called “Hadfield steel” has dominated and played significant role in wear applications, especially in the mines and minerals industries since its invention over a century ago. A review on the researches on this steel revealed that its prominence in these fields is mainly due to its good combination of impact and abrasion wear resistance arising from its high toughness and high hardness respectively. Its strain hardening ability under impact loading is evidenced by increase in hardness as the material work hardens; this lowers the amount of wear in service. The work hardening property of the steel has been linked to governing mechanisms such as dislocation, deformation twinning, and dynamic strain ageing; also, it is enhanced by increase in carbon, ageing temperature and reduction in manganese content. Carbide precipitation along the grain boundaries and within the grains is the major cause of embrittlement of the steel. These carbides together with voids and porosities during casting solidification, improper heat treatment, overheating during welding, use of unsorted scrap metal and wrong wear application have been identified as the causes of premature failure in service. Hardfacing method has been proposed as a means of substituting the steel in wear applications, as alternative wear materials such as white cast iron and austempered ductile iron lack the combination of impact and abrasion resistance being offered by the Hadfield steel.