Effect of Cooling Patterns on Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Hot-Rolled Nb Microalloyed Multiphase Steel Plates

The effect of the run-out table cooling patterns on the microstructure and mechanical properties of Nb microalloyed steel plates was investigated by hot rolling experiment. The results showed that the mixed microstrueture containing ferrite, bainite and significant amounts of retained austenite can be obtained through three kinds of cooling patterns on the run-out table under the same hot rolling condition. Three kinds of cooling patterns possess different austenite transformation kinetics, which leads to variations in microconstituent characteristics. The yield strength increases, the tensile strength decreases and the total elongation tends to increase as the cooling patterns Ⅰ , Ⅱ and Ⅲ were applied respectively. The yield strength, the total elongation and the product of tensile strength and ductility reach the maximum values （547 MPa, 37. 2% and 28 384 MPa% respectively） for the steel plate processed by cooling pattern Ⅲ.

Effects of heat treatment on structures and properties of high speed steel rolls

The effects of quenching temperature, cooling pattern, temper temperature andtemper times on the structure and properti-es of high speed steel (HSS) rolls have beeninvestigated. The results show that, when the quenching temperature is lower than 1050℃ thehardness of HSS increases with the quenching temperature increasing in oil cooling, but when thequenching temperature exceeds 1100℃ the hardness decreases. In the conditions of salt bath coolingand air cooling, the effect of quenching temperature on the hardness is similar to the above law,but the quenching temperature obtaining the highest hardness is higher than that in oil cooling.When the temper temperature below 350℃ the hardness of HSS has a little change, when above 475℃the hardness will increase with the temper temperature increasing, and the highest hardness isobtained at 525℃. When the temper temperature continues to increase, the hardness decreases. Twicetemper has little effect on the hardness, but three times temper decreases the hardness. HSS in aircooling has lower hardenability, oil cooling can easily produce crackle, and HSS quenching in saltbath has high harde-nability and excellent wear resistance.

Effect of Laminar Cooling on Phase Transformation Evolution in Hot Rolling Process

The effect of temperature variation owing to the cooling pattern （CP） on the microstructural evolution was investigated by establishing a thermomechanical coupled FE （finite element） model. A set of constitutive equations of phase transformation was implanted into the commercial FE solver MARC through the user defined subroutine CR- PLAW, and the temperature field was calculated by another user defined subroutine FILM. The results show that the final mierostructure is completely bainite phase for CP one, 98% of bainite phase and 2% of ferrite phase for CP two, and 55% of bainite phase, 35% of pearlite phase and 10% of ferrite phase for CP three.

Effect of Slab Subsurface Microstructure Evolution on Transverse Cracking of Microalloyed Steel during Continuous Casting

As to the continuous casting process of low carbon microalloyed steel, subsurface microstructure evolution plays an important role in the slab surface cracking. In order to study the effect of the slab subsurface microstructure evolution on the transverse cracking, three different secondary cooling patterns （i. e. , mild cooling, strong cooling and controlled cooling） were performed in the corresponding slab curved continuous caster. Based on the metallo- graphic results, three transformation regions were found to be formed with the evolution of microstructures at different depths in the slab subsurface. The three regions are strong cooling transformation （SCT） region, double phase transformation （DPT） region and mild cooling transformation （MCT） region, respectively. Meanwhile, it was also found that the crack index used for evaluating slab surface cracking susceptibility was decreased when the range of the DPT region was increased. This can be explained by the fact that the double phase transformation （austenite-ferrite-austenite） occurred resulting from thermal cycling in DPT region, which resulted in promoting the refinement of prior austenite grains and inhibiting the precipitation of film-like ferrite and chain-like precipitates. Under the con- trolled cooling pattern, the widely-distributed DPT region was formed in the range of 3.5--8.0 mm to the slab surface. And compared with other cooling patterns, the cracking susceptibility is lowest with a crack index of 0.4.