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Interpretation of the Effects of High Austenitizing Temperature on Toughness Behavior in a Low Alloy, High Strength Steel

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Abstract

An experimental investigation into the effects of high temperature austenitizing treatment (h.t.a.) on the microstructure and the mechanical properties, and micromechanisms of fracture in a variety of test conditions has been carried out on a Ni-Cr high strength steel. H.t.a. increased the fracture toughness, but decreased the tensile ductilities and notch toughness of this steel with a slight reduction in strength in the condition of strain-controlled fracture mode. However, the fracture toughness and notch toughness of steel were simultaneously improved by h.t.a. in the condition of stress-controlled fracture mode. This behavior of ductility and notch toughness is because the micro structural variations arising from h.t.a. have different roles in different fracture modes. It appears that the general effect of microstructural changes is beneficial to stress-controlled fracture, but the reverse is true to straincontrolled fracture. The fracture toughness behavior was greatly affected by the change in characteristic distance with austenitizing temperature, but the characteristic distance obtained from the best fitting of experimental results does not have clear physical meaning. It is observed that the application of macroscopic fracture stress or strain in analyzing local failure behavior ahead of the crack tip can be justified if the characteristic distance is consistent with the microstructural parameters related to the fracture process. The improvement in fracture toughness for stress controlled fracture mainly results from the large characteristic distance; whereas in the case of strain controlled fracture, this is caused by the much higher local fracture strain ahead of the crack tip of h.t.a. structure compared to that observed in structures produced by conventional austenitizing.

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  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Wei-Di Cao (Lecturer) & Xiao-Ping Lu (Associate Professor)

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  1. Wei-Di Cao
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Cao, WD., Lu, XP. Interpretation of the Effects of High Austenitizing Temperature on Toughness Behavior in a Low Alloy, High Strength Steel. Metall Trans A 18, 1569–1585 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02646141

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