Dissolution and precipitation of copper-rich phases during heating and cooling of precipitation-hardening steel X5CrNiCuNb16-4 (17-4 PH)

Abstract

Continuous heating transformation (CHT) diagrams and continuous cooling transformation (CCT) diagrams of precipitation-hardening steels have the drawback that important information on the dissolution and precipitation of Cu-rich phases during continuous heating and cooling are missing. This work uses a comparison of different techniques, namely dilatometry and differential scanning calorimetry for the in situ analysis of the so far neglected dissolution and precipitation of Cu-rich phases during continuous heating and cooling to overcome these drawbacks. Compared to dilatometry, DSC is much more sensitive to phase transformation affecting small volume fractions, like precipitation. Thus, the important solvus temperature for the dissolution of Cu-rich phases was revealed from DSC and integrated into the CHT diagram. Moreover, DSC reveals that during continuous cooling from solution treatment, premature Cu-rich phases may form depending on cooling rate. Those quench-induced precipitates were analysed for a broad range of cooling rates and imaged for microstructural analysis using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. This information substantially improves the CCT diagram.