Tensile behavior of Ti,Mo-added low carbon steels with interphase precipitation

Abstract

Tensile behavior and structure-property relationship of ferritic steels with nano-sized carbide dispersion were invesigated using Ti-added steel and Ti,Mo-added low carbon steels. By austenitizing followed by isothermal heat treatment at 700°C, polygonal ferrites containing very fine carbides of TiC and (Ti,Mo)C were obtained in the Ti-added and the Ti,Mo-added steels, respectively. The size of such carbides was finer in the Ti,Mo-added steel than in the Ti-added steel at the same isothermal holding. The results of tensile tests for these samples showed that the strength is higher as the carbide size is smaller. The structure-based strength calculation led to a good agreement with the experiments, when it was assumed that the Ashby-Orowan mechanism is dominant for precipitation strengthening of nano-sized alloy carbides. It was also suggested that a relatively large tensile ductility is related to enhanced recovery during the tensile deformation, accompanied with promotion of secondary slips or cross slips in a finer scale due to the nano-sized particles. © 2014 ISIJ.