Effect of boron addition on the microstructure of hot-deformed Ti-added interstitial free steel

Abstract

Effect of boron (B) addition and hot-deformation on microstructure of ferrite was studied using Ti-added interstitial free (IF) steels containing different amount of B. It was clarified that bainitic ferrite having typically lath or plate morphology with high dislocation density can be obtained also in plain IF steels by rapid cooling from austenite region. B addition largely affected the austenite-ferrite transformation and the amount of bainitic ferrite increased with increasing B content. Hot-deformation of austenite enhanced the transformation to polygonal or quasi-polygonal ferrite, resulting in decrease of bainitic ferrite. Interrupting compression tests indicated that enhanced transformation by hot-deformation is mainly due to grain refinement of austenite by recrystallization after hot-deformation. The cooling rate after hot-deformation produced the reversed effect of B on grain size of polygonal or quasi-polygonal ferrite. Ferrite grain size slightly decreased with increasing B content in the case of relatively large cooling rate. When the materials were cooled slowly after hot-deformation, on the other hand, the ferrite grain size increased with increasing B content. The coarse ferrite in B-bearing steels had fairly irregular shape of grain boundaries and inhomogeneous grain size, which suggested the contribution of somewhat discontinuous grain growth. This coarsening of ferrite would be responsible for the previously reported fact that B addition lowers Lankford value of cold-rolled and annealed IF steel sheets.