Abstract
The nucleation kinetics of proeutectoid ferrite during continuous cooling in three Fe-C-Mn-Si steels, measured in-situ by three-dimensional X-ray diffraction microscope, are compared with numerical simulation that takes into account differences in the activation energy of nucleation among grain boundary faces, edges, and corners. The essential feature of ferrite nucleation in the 0.21 pct C steel, i.e., nucleation occurred just below Ae3 and ceased at a small undercooling, is reproduced taking into account the site consumption, primarily at grain corners and overlap of solute diffusion fields in the grain boundary region or the matrix and assuming a very small or almost null activation energy of nucleation. In the 0.35 and 0.45 pct C steels, small activation energy, as reported by Offerman et al., was not unequivocally obtained because ferrite nucleation occurred at considerably large undercoolings, even below the paraequilibrium Ae3 in these steels. The increasing rate of the observed particle number with decreasing temperature is considerably smaller than calculation.
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Notes
Offerman et al. defined a factor Ψ, which consists of the cube of nucleus/matrix interfacial energy and the geometrical factor representing the critical nucleus shape. It is the numerator of the activation energy of nucleation ΔG* = Ψ/(ΔG V )2, where ΔG V is the driving force for nucleation. According to the well-known Wulff theorem,[22] the activation energy of nucleation is expressed as ΔG* = 4V W /(ΔG V )2. Hence, V W (=Ψ/4) is used throughout this article.
In the literature, “orthoequilibrium” has been used in this context. Following the proposition by Hillert and Ågren,[14] the term “full equilibrium” is used in this article.
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Acknowledgments
One of the authors (ME) is profoundly indebted to the late Professor H.I. Aaronson for many invaluable discussions and continual encouragement throughout his career. He also expresses his thanks to Dr. S.E. Offerman for stimulating discussions in the course of this work.
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This article is based on a presentation given in the symposium entitled “Solid-State Nucleation and Critical Nuclei during First Order Diffusional Phase Transformations,” which occurred October 15–19, 2006 during the MS&T meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio under the auspices of the TMS/ASMI Phase Transformations Committee.
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Enomoto, M., Yang, J. Simulation of Nucleation of Proeutectoid Ferrite at Austenite Grain Boundaries during Continuous Cooling. Metall Mater Trans A 39, 994–1002 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11661-008-9493-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11661-008-9493-6