On coarsening of cementite during tempering of martensitic steels

ABSTRACT

The coarsening of cementite in a martensitic Fe–1C–1Cr (wt-%) alloy upon tempering at 700°C is investigated. When considering that the main location of cementite is at grain boundaries, classical coarsening theory can accurately predict the mean size evolution, while the predicted size distribution evolution disagrees with the experimentally observed log-normal distribution maintained throughout the whole tempering (5000 h). We conclude that classical theory of coarsening, as given by Lifshitz–Slyozov–Wagner and included in the Langer–Schwartz Kampmann–Wagner numerical approach for modelling precipitation reactions, is not fully adequate to simulate coarsening of cementite for tempering in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Martensitic steel
• tempering
• precipitation
• coarsening
• particle size distribution

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Drs Fredrik Lindberg and Niklas Pettersson at Swerea KIMAB for experimental assistance. The suggestions from Professor Peter Voorhees at Northwestern University on this manuscript are gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Ziyong Hou http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4825-7430

R. Prasath Babu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4351-3132

Peter Hedström http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1102-4342

Joakim Odqvist http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3598-2465

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the VINN Excellence Center Hero-m, financed by VINNOVA, the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, Swedish industry and KTH Royal Institute of Technology.