Hot ductility of Nb- and Ti-bearing microalloyed steels and the inlfuence of thermal history

The hot ductility of Nb, Ti, and Nb-Ti containing steels has been studied under direct-cast conditions. A Gleeble 3500 thermomechanical simulator was used to determine hot ductility over the temperature range 1100 °C to 700 °C at a low strain rate of 7.5 × 10−4 s−1. Tensile samples were cooled at two different cooling rates, 100 °C/min and 200 °C/min, simulating, respectively, thick and thin slab casting processes. Complex thermal patterns designed to simulate the cooling conditions experienced near the surface of a slab during continuous casting were carried out for the Nb-Ti steel. The Nb-Ti steel had lower ductility than both the Nb and Ti steels. Increasing the cooling rate generally deteriorated ductility. The low recovery of ductility at higher temperatures is explained in terms of a low strain rate and fine precipitation delaying the onset of dynamic recrystallization. This can promote intergranular cracking as a result of grain boundary sliding in the austenite. At lower temperatures, ductility was further reduced due to the formation of thin ferrite films at the prior austenite grain boundaries. Simulating the thermal history experienced near the surface of thin (90 mm) cast slab improved ductility of the Nb-Ti steel by promoting coarser NbTi(C,N). This exposes a potential flaw in a simplified hot-ductility test: a failure to accurately represent the influence of the thermomechanical schedule on precipitation and, hence, hot ductility

CORRELATION OF MICROSTRUCTURE AND FRACTURE PROPERTIES IN WELD HEAT-AFFECTED ZONES OF THERMOMECHANICALLY CONTROLLED PROCESSED STEELS

This article presents a correlation study between the microstructural parameters and fracture properties in the weld heat-affected zones (HAZs) of high-strength low alloy (HSLA) steels, i.e., a normalized steel and four thermomechanically controlled processed (TMCP) steels. The influence of the local brittle zone (LBZ) on toughness was investigated by means of simulated HAZ tests as well as welded joint tests. The intercritically reheated coarse-grained HAZ exhibited the lowest impact energy over the testing temperature range, indicating that this region was the LBZ. By comparing the volume fraction of martensite islands with impact energy values, this LBZ was attributed mainly to the significant increase in the amount of martensite. Niobium was also found to have a deleterious effect on the HAZ fracture toughness because of martensite hardening. This suggests that the formation of martensite islands must be controlled by proper design of chemical compositions to reduce the carbon equivalent and by using the proper welding conditions to limit cooling rates in order to optimize the fracture toughness of welded joints of TMCP steels.X1127sciescopu