Effect of secondary nitride particles on grain growth in a Fe-20 mass% Cr alloy deoxidised with Ti and Zr

Abstract

The pinning effects of different particles on grain growth were investigated in Fe-20 mass% Cr alloys deoxidised with Ti and Zr. More specifically, in-situ observations of the specimen surface were made during heat treatment at 1 200 and 1 400°C in a High Temperature-Confocal Scanning Laser Microscope (HTCSLM). Initially, primary and secondary particles were investigated using thermodynamic equilibrium calculations and the SEM/EDX observations. Thereafter, the pinning effect of secondary nitride particles on grain boundary migration and the kinetics of the grain growth process were investigated. It was found that secondary nitride particles generally have a considerable effect on the pinning of grain boundary migration during heating treatment. This is especially true for heat treatment at 1 400°C. Despite that the pinning effect of TiN particles decreases due to dissolution of these particles, the implicit pinning effects of ZrO2, ZrO2-ZrN and ZrO2-ZrN-TiN particles appear. Thus, despite that TiN individually is ineffective in causing grain-boundary pinning at high-temperature, TiN is effective as a compound with ZrO2 and ZrN in pinning grain-boundaries at high temperatures. The changing of the uniformity of grain size distributions during grain growth at different N contents and temperatures was discussed based on the consideration of the geometric standard deviation of the grain size distribution (σg). © 2013 ISIJ.