Manganese is an alloying element that improves the hardenability of steels. It could be a valid substitute in sintered steels, increasing mechanical properties. The hardenability of three low alloy Mn steels was studied to establish the influence of manganese on the heat treatments. The Grossmann approach was adopted, which uses cylinders with different diameters to induce different gradients of cooling rate in the cross section. The correlation of microstructure and microhardness to the actual cooling rate makes the results independent on the process parameters and applicable to each industrial condition, once the actual cooling rate in the parts is known.

Ceramic-Metal Functionally Graded Materials (FGM) are of great interest for application as Thermal Barrier Coating (TBC) or Wear Resistant Coating (WRC). Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) is a promising techniques for time-saving consolidation of laminated/graduated powder systems: SPS is a pressure-assisted electrical sintering method which directly applies a pulsed DC current as heat source. In the present work, production of FGMs by means of Spark Plasma Sintering is considered; effect of sintering condition on density, hardness and fracture toughness is studied. Problems correlated to this new processing technology are discussed.