Influence of carbon content on toughening in ultrafine elongated grain structure steels

Abstract

(0.2-0.6)%C-2%Si-1%Cr-1%Mo steels were quenched and tempered at 773 K and then deformed by multi-pass caliber rolling (i.e., warm tempforming) with a rolling reduction of 78 % to obtain ultrafine elongated grain (UFEG) structures. Tensile and Charpy impact properties of the warm tempformed (TF) steels were investigated to make it clear the influence of the carbon content on toughening in the UFEG structures. The TF samples consisted of UFEG structures with a strong <110>//RD fiber deformation texture. Transverse grain size and aspect ratio in the UFEG structure tended to reduce with increasing the carbon content while carbide particle size slightly became larger. The increase in carbon content resulted in an increase in yield strength from 1.68 to 1.95 GPa at room temperature, while it was accompanied by a loss of tensile ductility. In contrast to quenched and tempered samples exhibiting ductile-to-brittle transitions, the TF samples exhibited inverse temperature dependences of the impact toughness due to the delaminations, where the cracks branched in the longitudinal direction (//RD) of the impact test bars. The upper-self energy of the TF sample was enhanced as the carbon content decreased, and the higher absorbed energy was also obtained through occurrence of the delamination at lower temperature. The delamination was found to be controlled not only by the transverse grain size, the grain shape, the <110>//RD fiber deformation texture but also by the carbide particle distribution in the UFEG structure.