Effect of Alloying Elements on the Sharpness Retention of Knife Blades Made of High Carbon Martensitic Stainless Steels

Blades usually become blunt as the blade tip suffers wear during cutting, and improving sharpness retention of steel blades has an attractive prospect in various industries. In this study, were fabricated from commercial high carbon martensitic stainless steels (154CM, 440C N690) with different contents alloying elements. 154CM higher Mo content demonstrated superior capability to N690, although these exhibit similar chemical composition, carbide phases, microstructure HRC hardness. Further investigations via SEM nanoindentation indicated that faster deterioration N690 may result fatigue peeling carbides, which was aggravated by modulus mismatch between particles matrix.