Effect of Mg Addition on Nucleation of Intra-granular Acicular Ferrite in Al-killed Low Carbon Steel

To verify the formation behaviors and mechanisms of intra-granular acicular ferrite（ IAF） grains nucleated by Mg-Al-O in low carbon steel,the steels containing different Mg contents were refined in a vacuum induction furnace. The effect of Mg addition on the formation of IAF structure in Al-killed low carbon steel was investigated by optical microscope（ OM） and scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscope（ SEM-EDX）. It reveals that the IAFs are only detected in Mg-added steels,and the volume fraction of IAF increases with the Mg concentration from 8 × 10^（-6） to 26 × 10^（-6）. It shows that not only the MgO-Al_2O_3-MnS and MgO-Al_2O_3-P_2O_5 particles are the effective nucleation sites for IAF,but also the pure MgO·Al_2O_3 phase can promote the ferrite nucleation. A Mn-depletion zone（ MDZ） is characterized adjacent to the MgO-Al_2O_3-MnS,which is believed to be one of the possible mechanisms to explain the IAF nucleation. The MDZ around the MgO-Al_2O_3-MnS inclusion would be induced by the Mn S precipitation on the inclusion. It seems that the ability of Mg-containing inclusions to induce the nucleation of ferrite might be attributed to a new mechanism,i. e.,the Prich zone formed on a few Mg-Al-O inclusions might be another factor for promoting the IAF formation.

Effect of Cooling Rate and Vanadium Content on the Microstructure and Hardness of Medium Carbon Forging Steel

This paper reports the effect of cooling rate on the microstructure and hardness of a kind of medium carbon steel microalloyed with two levels of V content （0.15% and 0.28%） after hot deformation by using single compression tests on a Gleeble-3800 thermal simulator. The results show that cooling rate has a significant effect on the microstructure and hardness of the tested steels. Both the fraction of pearlite and hardness increase with increasing cooling rate, whereas a further increase of the cooling rate above a critical value promotes the formation of acicular ferrite （AF）, and thus leads to a decrease of hardness mainly owing to the decrease of pearlite fraction and replacing it by AF and the less effective precipita- tion strengthening. Increasing V content results in a significant increase of hardness, and this tendency enhances with increasing cooling rate until the formation of AF. Furthermore, increasing V content also significantly enhances the formation of AF structure at a lower cooling rate. The results also suggest that by controlling microstructure, especially the precipitation of fine V（C,N） particles through adjusting post- forging cooling, the strengthening and gradient function in one hot-forging part could be obtained.