PSI - Issue 81

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 81 (2026) 552–557

© 2026 The Authors. Copy from the contract: Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of DMDP 2025 organizers Keywords: Hardfacing; high-manganese steel; molybdenum carbide; Mo 2 C; microstructure; hardness. 1. Introduction High-manganese austenitic steels, often referred to as Hadfield steels, are renowned for their exceptional work-hardening capacity, toughness, and wear resistance under high-impact conditions. These properties make them indispensable for components in industries such as mining, earthmoving, and railway engineering (Sabzi and Farzam, (2019); Yasniy et al. (2013)). The performance of these steels is intrinsically linked to the strain-induced transformation of the metastable austenite phase (Saeed Akbari et al., (2011)). To further enhance their performance, particularly under conditions involving both impact and abrasion, reinforcing these steels with hard particles has become a common strategy (Trembach et al., (2025)). Carbides such as titanium carbide (TiC) and niobium carbide (NbC) have been successfully used to create metal matrix composites and coatings on steel substrates, typically forming a structure of discrete, hard particles dispersed within the ductile Abstract This study investigates the formation of the microstructure and phase composition of hardfacing coatings based on the high-manganese steel – Mo 2 C system, produced by flux-cored arc welding (FCAW). A combination of thermodynamic modelling using Thermo-Calc software and experimental characterization via scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) was employed. The results indicate that the system is of a eutectic type, with the Mo 2 C-based carbide phase crystallizing as a network of thin layers surrounding the primary austenite grains, in contrast to the discrete particle morphology seen with other carbides like NbC and TiC. This carbide network morphology was found to inhibit the strain-hardening capacity of the austenitic matrix. However, the addition of Mo 2 C effectively suppressed the formation of cementite and led to a significant increase in the as-deposited hardness, from ~20 HRC to ~35 HRC with 20 vol.% Mo 2 C. The findings suggest that these coatings are suitable for applications involving high static and dynamic contact loads where initial hardness is more critical than work-hardening potential. VIII International Conference “In -service Damage of Materials: Diagnostics and Prediction “ (DMDP 2025) Microstructure and Hardness of High-Manganese Steel Coatings Reinforced with Molybdenum Carbide (Mo 2 C) Pavlo Prysyazhnyuk a, *, Ihor Paliichuk a , Arseniy Prysiazhniuk a , Serhii Marynenko b , Oleg Huryk b , Nadia Khomyk b , Ihor Koval b a Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas, Karpats'ka str. 15, Ivano-Frankivsk 76019, Ukraine b Ternopil Ivan Puluj National Technical University, Ruska str. 56, Ternopil 46001, Ukraine

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +380984272629. E-mail address: pavlo.prysiazhniuk@nung.edu.ua

2452-3216 © 2026 The Authors. Copy from the contract: Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of DMDP 2025 organizers 10.1016/j.prostr.2026.03.094