Development of microalloyed steels for high temperature carburizing

The potential for use of microalloy additions to suppress abnormal austenite grain growth and produce steels with enhanced bending fatigue resistance after high temperature vacuum carburizing was investigated in a series of Ti-modified SAE 8620 steels with w(niobium) additions up to 0.1%.Results are considered from a series of papers at the Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center on the effects of Nb content,heating rate, rolling history,and processing temperature on the evolution of austenite grain structures in carburizing steels. Emphasis is placed on understanding the effects of alloying and processing on each stage in the annealing process including the as received laboratory rolled conditions,during the onset of carburizing after annealing at different heating rates,and after annealing for various times at carburizing temperatures up to 1 100℃.Heating rate to the carburizing temperature was shown to be an influential variable and suppression of abnormal grain growth was dependent on the development of a critical distribution of fine NbC precipitates,stable at the austenitizing temperature.The importance to industrial carburizing practice of heating rate effects on precipitates and austenite grain size evolution are discussed and correlated to selected data on fatigue performance.

Ultra-high strength sheet steel property developments

Conventional advanced high strength steels(AHSS) such as dual-phase,TRIP and martensitic sheet products have undergone extensive development and substantially increased implementation in automobile structures over the past few years.Efforts are now underway to extend these improvements and develop steels with even greater strengths and formability.A variety of alloy/process/microstructure/property approaches aimed at next generation AHSS properties are highlighted here.One approach involves the quenching and partitioning process,originally conceived at the Colorado School of Mines,but now being investigated around the global automotive steel development community.Early implementation efforts are underway,and new results demonstrate the capability to obtain ultra-high strength levels with usable ductility.Viewing the field more broadly,it appears that several approaches are converging,and it is likely that additional attention will continue to be placed on expanding the allowable range of austenite stabilizing elements.

Annealing Response of Cold-Rolled Vanadium Microalloyed Sheet Steels

Vanadium microalloying is widely employed in hot-rolled HSLA products;because of its relatively high solubility in austenite,vanadium plays a special role in thin-slab cast hot-rolled products where reheating is limited prior to direct-rolling.In cold-rolled and annealed sheet steels,vanadium technology has been employed in bake-hardenable drawing-quality steels,and in HSLA products.Recent studies have investigated the continuous and batch annealing response of vanadium-containing cold-rolled HSLA steels,with an emphasis on aluminum and nitrogen variations (because of the special importance of nitrogen in vanadium microallyed steels,and interesting interactions between vanadium,aluminum and nitrogen).The present contribution reviews some key aspects of vanadium-microalloyed coldrolled sheet steels,and highlights the results of selected studies showing the influence of steel composition and processing.