Effects of Ni content and tempering temperatures on microstructure and properties of medium-carbon cast steel

The microstructure evolution and properties of medium-carbon cast steel alloyed with different Ni contents after tempering at various temperatures have been investigated.The addition of 0.47-1.59 wt.%Ni content results in the formation of 16%-36% retained austenite(RA).The blocky and irregular-polygonal RA mainly forms along the prior austenite grain boundaries,and the tempering temperature does not affect the RA content.The hardness of medium-carbon cast steel is affected by the precipitation of carbides and the hardness of martensite.Excessive RA content is the main cause of intergranular impact rupture and low impact energy.The long-strip carbides formed after tempering at 320℃ would further reduce the impact energy of medium-carbon cast steel.When tempering at 220 and 380℃,the increase in impact energy is attributed to the formation of rod-like and spherical carbides and the low-carbon martensite.For the medium-carbon cast steel with high impact energy,its impact-abrasive wear resistance is more excellent.Micro-cutting and delamination are the primary wear mechanisms.

Effect of Tempering Temperature on Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Steel Containing Ni of 9%

Mechanical properties of quenching,intercritical quenching and tempering （QLT） treated steel containing Ni of 9% were evaluated from specimens subject to various tempering temperatures. The detailed microstructures of steel containing Ni of 9% at different tempering temperatures were observed by optical microscope （OM） and transmission electron microscope （TEM）. The volume fraction of austenite was estimated by XRD. The results show that high strength and cryogenic toughness of steel containing Ni of 9% are obtained when the tempering temperature are between 540 and 580 ℃. The microstructure keeps the dual phase lamellar structure after the intercritical quenching and there is cementite created in the Ni-rich constituents when tempering temperature is 540 ℃. When tempering temperatures are between 560 and 580 ℃,the reversed austenites （γ′） grow up and the dual phase lamellar structure is not clear. The γ′ becomes instable at 600 ℃. When tempered at temperature ranging from 500 to 520 ℃,the increase of dislocation density in the lamellar matrix makes both tensile strength and yield strength decrease. When tempered at 540 ℃ and higher temperature,the yield strength decreases continuously because the C and alloying elements in the matrix are absorbed by the cementite and the γ′,so the yield ratio is decreased by the γ′. There are two toughness mechanisms at different tempering temperatures. One is that the precipitation of cementite absorbs the carbon in the steel which plays a major role in improving cryogenic toughness at lower temperature. Another is that the γ′ and the purified matrix become major role at higher tempering temperature. When the tempering temperature is 600 ℃,the stability of γ′ is decreased quickly,even the transformation takes place at room temperature,which results in a sharp decrease of Charpy-V impact energy at 77 K. The tempering temperature range is enlarged by the special distribution of cementite and the lamellar structure.

Effects of Tempering Temperature and Mo/Ni on Microstructures and Properties of Lath Martensitic Wear-Resistant Steels

The tempering behavior was experimentally studied in lath martensitic wear-resistant steels with various Mo/Ni contents after tempering at different temperatures from 200to 600℃.It is shown that a good combination of hardness（HV）（420-450）and-20℃impact toughness（38-70J）can be obtained after quenching and tempering at 200-250 ℃.The microstructure at this temperature is lath structure with rod-like and/or flake-likeε-carbide with about 10nm in width and 100nm in length in the matrix,and the fracture mechanism is quasi-cleavage fracture combining with ductile fracture.Tempering at temperature from 300to 400℃results in the primary quasi-cleavagefracture due to the carbide transformation from resolved retained austenite and impurity segregation between laths or blocks.However,when the tempering temperature is higher than 500℃,the hardness（HV）is lower than 330 and the fracture mechanism changes to ductile fracture due to the spheroidization and coarsening of cementite.Additions of Mo and Ni have no significant effects on the carbides morphologies at low tempering temperatures,but improve the resistance to softening and embrittling for steels when tempered at above 350℃.

Effect of tempering temperature on strain hardening exponent and flow stress curve of 1000MPa grade steel for construction machinery

To study the effect of tempering temperature on strain hardening exponent and flow stress curve,one kind of 1000 MPa grade low carbon bainitic steel for construction machinery was designed,and the standard uniaxial tensile tests were conducted at room temperature.A new flow stress model,which could predict the flow behavior of the tested steels at different tempering temperatures more efficiently,was established.The relationship between mobile dislocation density and strain hardening exponent was discussed based on the dislocation-stress relation.Arrhenius equation and an inverse proportional function were adopted to describe the mobile dislocation,and two mathematical models were established to describe the relationship between tempering temperature and strain hardening exponent.Nonlinear regression analysis was applied to the Arrhenius type model,hence,the activation energy was determined to be 37.6kJ/mol.Moreover,the square of correlation coefficient was 0.985,which indicated a high reliability between the fitted curve and experimental data.By comparison with the Arrhenius type curve,the general trend of the inverse proportional fitting curve was coincided with the experimental data points except of some fitting errors.Thus,the Arrhenius type model can be adopted to predict the strain hardening exponent at different tempering temperatures.

Effect of Temper Temperature on Microstructures and Wear Resistance of Surfacing Deposits of Ferro-Base with Cr-W-MO Alloy

In the paper, the effect of temper temperature on microstructures and wear resistance of surfacing deposits of Ferro-base with Cr-W-MO alloy were investigated. The results show that the secondary hardening can be obtained when the surfacing deposits is tempered. Temper temperature is lower than 400 ℃, the hardness of surfacing deposits of Ferro-base with Cr-W-MO alloy has little change, when it exceeded 600 ℃, the hardness decreases obviously, the surfacing deposits tempering at 560 ℃ for 2 h has excellent wear resistance. As a result, the microstructure of surfacing deposits is in relation to its wear resistance.

On microstructure and performance of tempered high-boron high-speed steel roll

Influences of the tempering temperature on the microstructure, mechanical property and wear resistance of High-Boron High Speed Steel (HBHSS) roll materials were investigated by means of optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction, hardness measurement, impact tester, tensile tester and pin abrasion tester. The results show that the as-cast structure of HBHSS consists of a great amount of martensite and M2(B,C) and a few retained austenites and M23(B,C)6. After solution treated at 1,050 °C and followed by oil cooling, the amount of M23(B,C)6 carbo-borides in quenched HBHSS increases obviously and the macrohardness of the quenched HBHSS is 66 HRC, which is very close to the 65.8 HRC of as-cast HBHSS. On the whole, the hardness of HBHSS alloy shows a trend of slight decrease with increasing tempering temperature when tempered below 500 °C. While when above 500 °C, the hardness increases slightly as the tempering temperature increases and reaches a peak at 525 °C and then decreases obviously. The impact toughness of HBHSS has a tendency to increase as the tempering temperature increases. Tempering can improve the tensile strength and elongation of HBHSS, but a higher tempering temperature causes a slight decrease in both tensile strength and elongation. Excellent wear resistance can be obtained by tempering at 500 to 550 °C.

Properties and Metallurgical Aspects of Heavy Wall Q&T Line Pipe Steels

The production of Q&T line pipe steels for heavy wall pipe requires several properties to be fully matched.Among them is the yield strength for strain based criteria pipelines for subsea application.Yield strength must match the required minimum under elevated temperature conditions [60 & 160 ℃] and at the same time do not exceed the surface hardness that will make the welding inadequate.Maximum of 220 vickers hardness has been set for some of the subsea projects.Production in a busy Q&T line requires simple tools to predict the time and temperatures to achieve the desired properties.The classical strength and logarithm of time,after Bhadeshia [1],has been used with excellent results in these line pipe steels of different wall thickness.

A Flow Stress Model for High Strength Steels with Low Carbon Bainite Structure

Two kinds of steels （YP960 and YP690） with low carbon bainite structure were designed, and their flow stress and strain hardening exponents were studied. The results showed that, when Hollomon relation was applied to descrihe the flow stress, there were significanl errors between the experimental and calculated points in specimens tempered below 400 ℃, while a high precision was ohserved in samples tempered above 400℃. Whereas, the modijied Voce relation could effectively predici the flow stress as well as the strain hardening exponent at different tempe ring temperatures, which was verified by unbiased estimators such as maximum relative error （MRXE） and average ahsolute relative error （AARE）. Besides, the modified Voee relation was also applied to estimate the maximum uniform strain, and the correlation coefficients （R） between the experimental data and calculated maximum uniform strain were more than 0.91. The high correlation coefficients indicated that the modified Vote relation could effec lively predict the uniform deformation ability of high strength steels with low carbon bainite structure at different tempering temperatures.

Comparison of microstructure and property of high chromium bearing steel with and without nitrogen addition

Microstructure and property of bearing steel with and without nitrogen addition were investigated by microstructural observation and hardness measurement after different heat treatment processing. Based on the microstructural observation of both 9Cr18 steel and X90N steel, it was found that nitrogen addition could effectively reduce the amount and size of coarse carbides and also refine the original austenite grain size. Due to addition of nitrogen, more austenite phase was found in X90N steel than in 9Cr18 steel. The retained austenite of X90N steel after quenching at 1050℃ could be reduced from about 60% to about 7 9% by cold treatment at -73℃ and subsequent tempering, and thus finally increased the hardness up to 60 HRC after low temperature tempering and to 63 HRC after high temperature tempering. Furthermore, both the wear and corrosion resistance of X90N steel were found much more superior than those of 9Cr18 steel, which was attributed to the addition of nitrogen. It was proposed at last that nitrogen alloying into the high chromium bearing steel was a promising way not only to refine the size of both carbides and austenite, but also to achieve high hardness, high wear property and improved corrosion resistance of the stainless bearing steel.

Effect of rhenium on the microstructure and mechanical behavior of Fe–2.25Cr–1.6W–0.25V-0.1C bainitic steels

A new ferritic creep resistant steel has been developed by eliminating Nb and adding 1.5 mass % Re to a ferritic steel grade T/P23 with the aim of enhancing its mechanical properties at high temperature.Cast ingots of both steels, new grade and ASTM T/P 23, were hot rolled at 900℃ and then submitted to a thermal treatment consisting of solubilization at 1050℃ and tempering at 700℃. Tempered bainitic microstructures obtained contain second phases reinforcing carbide particles, mainly M_6C and M_（23）C_6 at the boundaries of both, prior austenite grains and bainitic ferrite laths, as well as MC within the grains. Mechanical properties at temperatures ranging from 540 to 600℃ were studied by strain-ratechange tests in compression at strain rates between 10^（-7） and 10^（-4）s^（-1）. These tests showed high stress exponents（n ≥ 20） and activation energies（Q ≈ 400 k J/mol） for both alloys, which were associated with a dislocation movement mechanism with a strong interaction between dislocations and precipitates. On the other hand, a creep exponent of 5 was derived for the stress dependence of minimum creep rate from conventional-type creep tests at 600℃. Although this stress exponent is usually related to a dislocation climb controlled creep mechanism, remarkable microstructural degradation observed with increasing creep time makes difficult to elucidate the true deformation mechanism controlling creep.