Microstructures and Mechanical Properties of X100 Pipeline Steel Strip

Dynamic CCT （continuous cooling transformation） curves and effects of microstructures and M/A islands of X100 hot rolled strip on mechanical properties were studied by means of a thermal simulator, a scanning electron mi- croscope （SEM）, a transmission electron microscope （TEM）, a digital micro-hardness tester and Image-Pro Plus analysis software. The results show that high contents of C and Mo can make transformation lines of acicular ferrite and bain- ite shift rightward. High Mo tested strip has higher strength and micro-hardness and lower toughness than the other one because lath bainite appears instead of quasi-polygonal ferrite. Tested strip with granular bainite, lath bainite and M/A islands has better mechanical properties and in the microstructures lath bainite content is around 36.50% and M/A islands are fine and disperse in the matrix.

Relationship between microstructure and corrosion behavior of high-grade pipeline steel in a low-temperature environment

The relationship between micro structure and corrosion behavior of high-grade pipeline steel under low-temperature conditions was comparatively investigated by the potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spec-troscopy test combining with optical micrographs,scanning electron microscopy,transmission electron microscopy and electron back-scattered diffraction.The results showed that,compared with room and high temperature,low temperature could influence the corrosion behavior of high-grade pipeline steel,which means that the corrosion potential and current density decreased and the corrosion resistance increased significantly.Moreover,double layer structures of the interface became thicker and more compact.Under low-temperature environment,acicular ferrite had the martensite/austenite constituents with less amount and smaller size,a higher density of low angle grain boundaries and smaller effective grain sizes compared with granular bainite,which demonstrated higher corrosion resistance.

Effects of continuous cooling rate on morphology of granular bainite in pipeline steels

The morphology and characteristics of granular bainite (GB) in pipeline steels at different continuous cooling rates were investigated by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD). The results show that the morphology of ferrite matrix in GB turned from the lath sheaf structure into the nearly equiaxed large grain with the cooling rate decreasing from high (60℃/s) to low (5-10℃/s). At the medium cooling rate (20-40℃/s), GB consisted of the irregular ferrite matrix, the granular martensite/austenite (M/A) constituents and abundant substructures inside. The formation of the irregular ferrite and substructure was attributed to the high-temperature recovery which occurred at relatively high-temperature stage before phase transformation. The granular morphology of M/A constitu-ents was formed from the carbon-rich triple junctions which were produced by the multidirectional substructure interfaces converged with each other. Particularly, some martensite in M/A constituents was misoriented from the adjacent ferrite by very small misorientation angle, which could be characterized by the mean band contrast function of EBSD qualitatively or semiquantitatively.

Effect of Pre-deformation on Grain Ultrafining by Intercritical Deformation in Low-Carbon Microalloyed Steels

In this study, the effect of pre-deformation at recrystallization and non-recrystallization zone on the grain ultrafining by the subsequent intercritical deformation （ID） was investigated on low-carbon microalloyed steel. The results showed that ultrafine grain microstructure with an average size of - 1.0 μm was fabricated through pre-deformation in the recrys- tallization zone followed by ID. When pre-deformed at the non-recrystallization zone prior to ID, the grain size increased to 1.6 μm with a heterogeneous distribution along with the well-developed dynamic recovery of ferrite. The grain ultrafining mechanism was attributed to the combined action of the deformation-induced ferrite transformation and the continuous dynamic recrystallization. In particular, the continuous dynamic recrystallization process during ID occurred on the pro-eutectoid ferrite as a result of the subgrain rotation mechanism and the absorbing dislocations mechanism.