Numerical simulation of carbide and nitride precipitate evolution in steels

Abstract

A numerical method of simulation of carbide and nitride precipitates evolution in steels at isothermal annealing is described. This method is based on the mean field approximation and consideration of precipitates evolution in field cells. Not only the growth and dissolution of the particles present, but also the nucleation of the new ones is taken into account. This method enables to simulate the precipitates evolution at all the stages beginning from the nucleation and up to the stationary coarsening. The results of kinetic calculations of vanadium carbides evolution in steels for different initial particle size distributions are presented and analyzed. © 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.