Use of small punch test to estimate the mechanical properties of sintered products and application to synchronizer hubs

Powder metallurgy is a manufacturing technology widely used, especially in the automotive sector. In order to assure the quality of these components different conventional tests are employed directly on the final product, but in order to make the mechanical characterization of sintered materials, standard mechanical tests can only be performed onto samples compacted and sintered in controlled conditions similar to the ones used in real production. The final mechanical properties of these products after compacting and sintering are the input needed to define and analyze new geometries and products. The use of the small punch test (SPT) to mechanically characterize in a direct way the final sintered products was explained in this research work and the regressions to determine the tensile mechanical properties of the aforementioned products were also developed.