Forgings produced in industry are an irreplaceable basis for subsequent elaborating on machine tools. The quality of the semi-finished product produced by forging is a necessary prerequisite for ensuring the final quality of the final product because the forging can produce some defects. The presented paper is aimed at investigation of selected characteristics of forging steel specimens for various levels of their relative reduction. Ultrasound testing belongs to methods for investigation of structure changes, including defects. Experimental investigation, using both the attenuation and velocity measurements, verify that the reduction of specimens' material can have an effect on the propagation of ultrasound waves passing through the specimen body. The procedure of steel samples forging corresponds accordingly to the process of their hardening. The increase of toughness after relative reduction of forging in the range of 10-50% is with highest probability caused by the strength matrices development due to the relatively important deformation hardening. It is evident that the deformation hardening is almost the same after every 10% addition of relative reduction. Experiments are supplemented by Barkhausen noise detection and metallographic characteristics of the samples. While differences between the Barkhausen noise values are in principle relatively small and significant differences are only in the values of the position of the envelope, there is maximum coincidence with ultrasonic investigation.
Keywords: Barkhausen noise; forging metal specimens; hidden defects; ultrasonic investigation.