Effect of silicon and prior deformation of austenite on isothermal transformation in low carbon steels

Isothermal transformation （TTT） behavior of the low carbon steels with two Si contents （0.50 wt pct and 1.35 wt pct） was investigated with and without the prior deformation. The results show that Si and the prior deformation of the austenite have significant effects on the transformation of the ferrite and bainite. The addition of Si refines the ferrite grains, accelerates the polygonal ferrite transformation and the formation of M/A constituents, leading to the improvement of the strength. The ferrite grains formed under the prior deformation of the austenite become more homogeneous and refined. However, the influence of deformation on the tensile strength of both steels is dependent on the isothermal temperatures. Thermodynamic calculation indicates that Si and prior deformation reduce the incubation time of both ferrite and bainite transformation, but the effect is weakened by the decrease of the isothermal temperatures.

Effect of lower bainite/martensite/retained austenite triplex microstructure on the mechanical properties of a low-carbon steel with quenching and partitioning process

We present a study concerning Fe-0. 176C-1.31Si-1.58Mn-0.26Al-0.3Cr （wt%） steel subjected to a quenching and partitioning （Q＆P） process. The results of scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and tensile tests demon- strate that the microstructures primarily consist of lath martensite, retained austenite, lower bainite （LB）, and a small amount of tempered martensite; moreover, few twin austenite grains were observed. In the microstrucmre, three types of retained austenite with different sizes and morphologies were observed： blocky retained austenite （-300 nm in width）, film-like retained austenite （80-120 nm in width）, and ul- tra-fine film-like retained austenite （30-40 nm in width）. Because of the effect of the retained austenite/martensite/LB triplex microstructure, the specimens prepared using different quenching temperatures exhibit high ultimate tensile strength and yield strength. Furthermore, the strength effect of LB can partially counteract the decreasing strength effect of martensite. The formation of LB substantially reduces the amount of retained austenite. Analyses of the retained austenite and the amount of blocky retained austenite indicated that the carbon content is critical to the total elongation of Q＆P steel.

Effect of normalizing cooling process on microstructure and precipitates in low-temperature silicon steel

Microstructure, precipitate and magnetic characteristic of fmal products with different normalizing cooling processes for Fe-3.2%Si low-temperature hot-rolled grain-oriented silicon steel were analyzed and compared with the hot-rolled plate by optical microscopy （OM）, transmission electron microscopy （TEM）, and energy dispersive spectrometry （EDS）. The results show that, the surface microstructure is uniform, the proportion of recrystallization in matrix increases, and the banding textures are narrowed; the precipitates, whose quantity in normalized plate is more than that in hot-rolled plate greatly, are mainly A1N, MnS, composite precipitates （Cu,Mn）S and so on. Normalizing technology with a temperature of 1120 ℃, holding for 3 min, and a two-stage cooling is a most advantaged method to obtain oriented silicon steel with sharper Goss texture and higher magnetic properties, owing to the uniform surface microstructures and the obvious inhomogeneity of microstructures along the thickness. The normalizing technology with the two-stage cooling is the optimum process, which can generate more fine precipitates dispersed over the matrix, and be beneficial for finished products to get higher magnetic properties.

Advanced manufacturing technologies of large martensitic stainless steel castings with ultra low carbon and high cleanliness

The key manufacturing technologies associated with composition, microstructure, mechanical properties, casting quality and key process control for large martensitic stainless steel castings are involved in this paper. The achievements fully satisfeid the technical requirements of the large 700 MW stainless steel hydraulic turbine runner for the Three Gorges Hydropower Station, and become the major technical support for the design and manufacture of the largest 700 MW hydraulic turbine generator unit in the world developed through our own efforts. The characteristics of a new high yield to tensile strength (R p0.2/R m ) ratio and high obdurability martensitic stainless steel with ultra low carbon and high cleanliness are also described. Over the next ten years, the large martensitic stainless steel castings and advanced manufacturing technologies will see a huge demand in clean energy industry such as nuclear power, hydraulic power at home and abroad. Therefore, the new high yield o tensile strength (R p0.2/R m ) ratio and high obdurability martensitic stainless steel materials, the fast and flexible manufacturing technologies of large size castings, and new environment friendly sustainable process will face new challenges and opportunities.

Development of Low and Middle Carbon Martensite Spring Steel with High Strength and Toughness for Automobile

The conventional middle and high carbon spring steels have some drawbacks in properties, production and application. In order to meet the demands of rapid development of automobile, a new low and middle carbon spring steel 35Si2CrMnVB, C0.34, Sil.66, MnO.80, CrO.67, V0.13, B0.001, P0.011, S0.014 wt.%, has been developed. Comparison between the new spring steel 35Si2CrMnVB and the conventional spring steel 60Si2MnA, C0.61, Si 1.75, MnO.76, P0.021, S0.018 wt.%, shows that the new spring steel has not only high strength, good ductility, good comprehensive mechanical properties, but also low decarbonization tendency, sufficient hardenability and high elastic sag resistance, etc.. The microstructure change in quenched steel caused by the decreasing of carbon contents is detected through metallographic observation, the new low and middle carbon spring steel 35Si2CrMnVB after quenching is composed of almost lath martensite with high dislocation density and only a little martensite with twin structure. It is testified that to develop low carbon spring steel with more excellent properties for automobile is feasible.

Study of the fatigue fractography of dual phase low carbon steel used in automotive industry

Fatigue properties play a crucial role as they are vital to ensuring the durability and integrity of components subjected to repeated loading conditions over long periods.The main objective of this work is to investigate the fatigue behavior of dual phase low-carbon steels used in automotive applications using a rotating bending fatigue machine.Heat treatments were carried out to analyze the microstructure's effect on the fatigue properties,including quenching low-carbon steel samples at 800℃ and 900℃.Hardness and tensile tests were performed,and the microstructure was inspected to examine the constitute phases.With the assistance of a scanning electron microscope,fractographic analyses were carried out to reveal the fracture features of the samples at different lifetime ranges.The results show that various failure mechanisms occur depending on the stress levels.Additionally,the specimens quenched at 900℃ exhibited higher fatigue strength.

Oxide and Sulfide Dispersive Precipitation and Effects on Microstructure and Properties of Low Carbon Steels

Electron microscopic investigation on low carbon steel strips produced by the CSP process has been carried out. Large number of oxide dispersive precipitates have been observed in the ferrite matrix of the steel strips. Dimension of them is about 10~20 nm. Electron diffraction study showed that the structure of these precipitates consists with cubic system spinel structure. Their lattice parameter is about 0.83 nm. The results implied that they should be complex oxides of Fe, Al et al. Small sulfide particles with 100-300 nm in size have also been observed. Remarkable strengthening and grain refinement effects can be obtained by the precipitations. The oxygen and sulfur in steels could play beneficial role under certain conditions.

Solidification Structure of Low Carbon Steel Strips with Different Phosphorus Contents Produced by Strip Casting

In the present paper, low carbon steel strips with different phosphorus contents were produced using a twin roll strip casting process. The solidification structure was studied and its features were analyzed in detail. It was found that the strips possessed a fine microstructure compared with the mould cast steels. With increasing phosphorus content more ferrite has been formed with finer grains.

Analysis of the formation conditions and characteristics of interphase and random vanadium precipitation in a low-carbon steel during isothermal heat treatment

The characteristics of nanosized precipitates in steels depend on the heat-treatment parameters. The effects of characteristics of vanadium precipitates formed during isothermal heat treatment on the hardness of the ferrite matrix in low-carbon vanadium-alloyed steel were investigated through analysis of transmission electron microscopy images and microhardness measurements. The results show that, during isothermal holding in the temperature range from 675 to 750℃, only interphase precipitation occurs, whereas only random precipitation occurs in the ferrite matrix during holding at 600℃. Furthermore, during isothermal heat treatment between 600 and 675℃, both random and interphase precipitates occurred in the ferrite. Nanoscale vanadium carbides with different atomic ratios of vanadium(V) and carbon(C) were the dominant precipitates in the random and interphase precipitates. The sizes of random precipitation carbides were smaller than those of interphase ones. Also, the sample isothermally heat treated at 650℃ for 900s exhibited a higher hardness with a narrower hardness distribution.

Austenite Recrystallization and Controlled Rolling of Low Carbon Steels

The dynamic recrystallization and static recrystallization in a low carbon steel were investigated through single-pass and double-pass experiments. The results indicate that as the deformation temperature increases and the strain rate decreases, the shape of the stress-strain curve is changed from dynamic recovery shape to dynamic recrystallization shape. The austenite could not recrystallize within a few seconds after deformation at temperature below 900 ℃. According to the change in microstructure during deformation, the controlled rolling of low carbon steel can be divided into four stages： dynamic recrystallization, dynamic recovery, strain-induced ferrite transformation, and rolling in two-phase region. According to the microstructure after deformation, the controlled rolling of low carbon steel can be divided into five regions： non-recrystallized austenite, partly-recrystallized austenite, fully-recrystallized austenite, austenite to ferrite transformation, and dual phase.

Effect of tempering temperature on the mechanical properties and microstructure of an copper-bearing low carbon bainitic steel

The effect of tempering temperature on the microstructure and mechanical properties of ultra-high strength, copperbearing, low-carbon bainitic steel has been investigated in the experiment. The results showed that the microstructure was mainly the laths of bainite in the as-quenched steel. The bainitic laths were restored and combined after the steel tempered at various tempera- tures. There were rnartensite/austenite （M/A） islands and numerous dislocations within and between the bainitic laths, while very t-me precipitates of ε-Cu were also observed within the laths. With increasing the tempered temperature from 400 to 600℃, the yield strength （YS） increased from 877 to 957 MPa, whereas the ultimate tensile strength （UTS） decreased from 1020 to 985 MPa. The Charpy V-notch （CVN） varied from 68.5 to 42 J, and the value was minimal for the steel tempered at 500℃. 2008 University of Science and Technology Beijing. All rights reserved.

Controlled Rolling and Cooling Process for Low Carbon Cold Forging Steel

Effect of controlled rolling and cooling process on the mechanical properties of low carbon cold forging steel was investigated for different processing parameters of a laboratory hot rolling mill. The results show that the specimens with fast cooling after hot rolling exhibit very good mechanical properties, and the improvement of the mechanical properties can be attributed mainly to the ferrite-grain refinement. The mechanical properties increase with decreasing final cooling temperature within the range from 670 ℃ to 570 ℃ due to the finer interlamellar spacing of pearlite colony. The specimen with fast cooling after low temperature rolling shows the highest values of the mechanical properties. The effect of the ferrite grain size on the mechanical properties was greater than that of pearlite morphology in the present study. The mechanical properties of specimens by controlled rolling and cooling process without thermal treatment were greatly superior to that of the same specimens by the conventional rolling, and their tensile strength reached 490 MPa grade even in the case of low temperature rolling without controlled rolling. It might be expected to realize the substitution medium-carbon by low-carbon for 490 MPa grade cold forging steel with controlled rolling and cooling process.

Surface Ferrite Grain Refinement and Mechanical Properties of Low Carbon Steel Plates

Considering the specialities of the steel plate production, the TMCP study has been carried out with Gleeble 2000 tester to explore the possibility of fine grained ferrite in the low carbon steel plates with the chemical composition of C 0.13--0.18, Si 0.12-0.18, Mn 0.50-0. 65, P 0. 010-0. 025, and S 0. 005-0. 028. The plates with thickness of 8. 7 mm in which the ferrite grain size is smaller than 8μm have been produced by special de- formation process in the laboratory. Furthermore, the trial production of special plain carbon steel plates of 16-25 mm in thickness and 2 000- 2 800 mm in width with fine grained ferrite has been successfully carried out in the Shougang Steel Plate Rolling Plant. The ferrite grain size is 5.5-7μm in the surface layers and 9.5-15μm in the central layer respectively. The yield strength is 320- 360 MPa, tensile strength is 440-520 MPa and the elongation is 25%- 34 %. It is very important for the rolling plants to improve the low carbon steel plates＇ mechanical properties. The results show that the ferrite grains in the surface layer can be refined effectively by the appropriate rolling process, and the strength can be also increased.

Coordinated control of carbon and oxygen for ultra-low-carbon interstitial-free steel in a smelting process

Low residual-free-oxygen before fmal de-oxidation was beneficial to improving the cleanness of ultra-low-carbon steel. For ultra-low-carbon steel production, the coordinated control of carbon and oxygen is a precondition for achieving low residual oxygen during the Ruhrstahl Heraeus （RH） decarburization process. In this work, we studied the coordinated control of carbon and oxygen for ultra-low-carbon steel during the basic oxygen furnace （BOF） endpoint and RH process using data statistics, multiple linear regressions, and thermodynamics computations. The results showed that the aluminum yield decreased linearly with increasing residual oxygen in liquid steel. When the mass ratio of free oxygen and carbon （[O]/[C]） in liquid steel before RH decarburization was maintained between 1.5 and 2.0 and the carbon range was from 0.030wt% to 0.040wt%, the residual oxygen after RH natural decarburization was low and easily controlled. To satisfy the requirement for RH decarburization, the carbon and free oxygen at the BOF endpoint should be controlled to be between 297 × 10^6 and 400 × 10^-6 and between 574 × 10^-6 and 775 × 10^-6, respectively, with a temperature of 1695 to 1715℃ and a furnace campaign of 1000 to 5000 heats.

Prediction of the Charpy V-notch impact energy of low carbon steel using a shallow neural network and deep learning

The impact energy prediction model of low carbon steel was investigated based on industrial data. A three-layer neural network, extreme learning machine, and deep neural network were compared with different activation functions, structure parameters, and training functions. Bayesian optimization was used to determine the optimal hyper-parameters of the deep neural network. The model with the best performance was applied to investigate the importance of process parameter variables on the impact energy of low carbon steel. The results show that the deep neural network obtains better prediction results than those of a shallow neural network because of the multiple hidden layers improving the learning ability of the model. Among the models, the Bayesian optimization deep neural network achieves the highest correlation coefficient of 0.9536, the lowest mean absolute relative error of 0.0843, and the lowest root mean square error of 17.34 J for predicting the impact energy of low carbon steel. Among the variables, the main factors affecting the impact energy of low carbon steel with a final thickness of7.5 mm are the thickness of the original slab, the thickness of intermediate slab, and the rough rolling exit temperature from the specific hot rolling production line.

Preparation and Properties of Anti-oxidation Inorganic Nano-coating for Low Carbon Steel at an Elevated Temperature

A new kind of anti-oxidation inorganic nano-coating for the common low carbon steel was prepared. It included magnesite mineral, metallurgic dust and silicate adhesive as the main raw materials. The nano-coating could be sprayed directly onto the low carbon steel slab even though with hot surface as far as under 1000 ℃ . And at the same time, a compact thin nano-film was formed, and the film would inhibit the oxygen into the interface of the steel body and decrease the loss of weight because of oxidation. The loss was decreased by about 60% or more. The properties and mechanism of oxidation resistance of the coating were discussed through XRD, TG-DTA and SEM. The experimental results show that many reactions would happen among the companents of the coating and then many microspheres with the size of 80- 100nm generated in the system. By using the heat of the steel body, the silicate adhesive would interact with the microspheres, and the other components of the coating would be soft and sintered so that when the coating was sprayed onto the suface of the steel slab , the intact and compact film could be formed and adhesive with the steel body. Besides the special properties of anti- oxidation, the coating could prevent the volatilization of microelement in the steel such as silicate and carbon at a high temperature. So it can improve the quality and output of steel with this new kind of nano-coating.

Effect of zirconium addition on the austenite grain coarsening behavior and mechanical properties of 900 MPa low carbon bainite steel

The ultra-fine bainitic microstructure of a 900 MPa low carbon bainitic Cu-Ni-Mo-B steel was obtained by a newly developed relaxation precipitation control （RPC） phase transformation processing. In a pan-cake like prior-austenite grain, the micro- structure consisted of lath bainite, a little of abnormal granular bainite, and acicular ferrite. The effect of zirconium carbonitrides on the austenite grain coarsening behavior was studied by transmission electron microscopy （TEM）. The results show that, the lath is narrower with increasing cooling rate. The ratio of all kinds of bainitic microstructure is proper with the intermediate cooling rate; and Zr-containing precipitates distribute uniformly, which restrains austenite grain growing in heat-affected welding zone.

Effect of stabilizing elements Nb and Ti on the microstructure and properties of low carbon ferritic stainless steel

The effect of stabilizing elements, such as Nb and Ti, on the microstructure and properties of low carbon ferritic stainless steel （FSS） has been investigated. The results of the Thermo-calc simulation have shown that the interstitial elements, such as C and N, may be completely stabilized by the addition of Nb and Ti. With the increase of Nb and Ti contents ,the α ＋ γ two phases gradually transfer to a single α-phase under a high temperature condition ,and the content of the carbide M23 C6 gradually decreases. The microstructure has indicated that the combined addition of Nb and Ti can promote the recrystallization of the band structure and form more uniform equiaxed grains. Also, with the increase of Nb and Ti contents,the elongation, the r-value and the corrosion resistance of cold-rolled and annealed sheets are improved prominently. In comparison with the effect of Ti ,the addition of Nb is more beneficial to the increase of r-value and the corrosion resistance.