Abstract
Medium-Mn steels have attracted immense attention for automotive applications owing to their outstanding combination of high strength and superior ductility. This steel class is generally characterized by an ultrafine-grained duplex microstructure consisting of ferrite and a large amount of austenite. Such a unique microstructure is processed by intercritical annealing, where austenite reversion occurs in a fine martensitic matrix. In the present study, austenite reversion in a medium-Mn alloy was simulated by the multiphase-field approach using the commercial software MICRESS® coupled with the thermodynamic database TCFE8 and the kinetic database MOBFE2. In particular, a faceted anisotropy model was incorporated to replicate the lamellar morphology of reversed austenite. The simulated microstructural morphology and phase transformation kinetics (indicated by the amount of phase) concurred well with experimental observations by scanning electron microscopy and in situ synchrotron high-energy X-ray diffraction, respectively.
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 761 ‘Steel-ab initio: Quantum mechanics guided design of new Fe-based materials’ and the project BL402/49-1. H.W. Luo is thankful for the financial supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51861135302 and 51831002). Dr. Bernd Böttger at ACCESS e.V. is acknowledged for the helpful discussions. The synchrotron high-energy X-ray diffraction measurements were carried out at the Powder Diffraction and Total Scattering Beamline P02.1 of PETRA III at DESY (No. I-20181007), a member of the Helmholtz Association (HGF), which is gratefully acknowledged. Dr. Martin Etter at DESY is acknowledged for his support of acquiring HEXRD data.
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Ma, Y., Zheng, R., Gao, Z. et al. Multiphase-field simulation of austenite reversion in medium-Mn steels. Int J Miner Metall Mater 28, 847–853 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12613-021-2282-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12613-021-2282-6