One of the major processes performed in the mining industry is the crushing of rocks.This process is generally undertaken using a crusher. In this type of machinery thereare usually two metal plates between which the rocks to be crushed are forced. As canbe expected, these metal plates are subjected to high impact forces and must withstandextreme wear. The material used for such applications so far is high manganese steelalso known as Hadfield steel. This material is used due to its high mechanical properties.However, the service life of such steels is not very long due to the high wear and tearthey undergo during service.

One possible alternative is advanced high strength steel. This is due to the very finemicrostructures that can be achieved by having a controlled chemical composition and avery precise heat treatment in AHSS. This way, high levels of hardness and ductility areachieved. This must be coupled with a heat treatment that allows the stabilization ofaustenite and the Trip effect in the material. The heat treatments studied and designedin this project is a quenching and partitioning.

The aim of this project was to obtain the adequate quenching and partitioning parameters for the material studied in order to accomplish the mechanical requirements. Tostudy the mechanical properties of the material and the microstructure several tests werecarried out. Micro hardness, Charpy impact test and X-Ray diffraction where the principal analysis to characterize the material. Finally, the three heat treatments with thebest properties where selected to produce the different wear plates that will be studiedin future work.

The results have shown several behaviors. High partitioning temperatures lead to ahigher percentage of stabilized austenite. Nonetheless, the partitioning time has a lessereffect than the temperature. It was also observed that quenching with water down toroom temperature is not possible due to cracks formed in the material. Better mechanicalproperties were observed when quenching with oil due to a smaller undercooling whenquenching with hot water. Finally, no carbides were observed with the heat treatmentsperformed in this project.