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Microstructures of an Ultrane Grained SS400 Steel in an Industrial Scale

Hua DING1,2) , Long LI1) , Chunzheng YANG1) , Dan SONG1) and Linxiu DU2)
1) School of Materials and Metallurgy, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110004, China 2) State Key Laboratory of Rolling and Automation, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110004, China
[Manuscript received April 17, 2005, in revised form July 28, 2005]

The microstructures of a SS400 steel after thermomechanical control process (TMCP) in an industrial production were observed by optical microscope, scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). The results indicated that the size of ferrite grains was 45m, and the volume fraction of ferrite was around 70%. The types of the ultrane ferrite grains were analyzed and the strengthening mechanisms were discussed. The results show that the ultrane ferrite grains came from three processes, i.e. deformation induced ferrite transformation (DIFT), dynamic recrystallization of ferrite and accelerated cooling process. The increase in the strength of the material was mainly due to the grain rening. KEY WORDS: SS400 steel; Ultrane ferrite grain; Mechanical property; Microstructure

1. Introduction Low carbon steels have been widely used in industries, but their relatively low strength limits them to be used in a wider range. In last two decades, much work has been done on attaining ultrane grained low carbon steels to increase their strength since grain rening is the only way to obtain both high strength and good ductility. For low carbon steels, a useful technique is to deform austenite heavily near the critical temperature Ar3 with accelerated cooling[17] . The new method can be characterized by a combination of deformation induced ferrite transformation (DIFT) and possible dynamic recrystallization of ferrite. Meanwhile, the eects of deformation temperature, strain rate as well as strain on DIFT[810] and the features of dynamic recrystallization of ferrite[11] in ultrane grained low carbon steels have been extensively investigated. In industrial scale, ultrane grained low carbon steels have been produced in rolling plants[12] and the strength of the steels increased signicantly. It is necessary to investigate the microstructures of the ultrane grained steels in industrial production in detail to understand what occurred during the thermomechanical control process (TMCP) and to provide some information for optimizing the schedule. In the present study, the mechanical properties of an ultrane grained SS400 steel after TMCP were measured and the microstructures were investigated. The formation of ultrane ferrite grains and the strengthening mechanisms were also discussed. 2. Experimental The composition of the SS400 steel used is shown in Table 1. The thickness of the intermediate billet was 4253 mm. The steel ingots were rstly rolled in a 5 stand roughing mill and then in a 7 stand nishing mill on a hot strip rolling machine in a steel plant. The nishing temperature was below 800 C
Prof., Ph.D., to whom correspondence should be addressed, E-mail: hding@263.net.

Fig.1 Microstructure of SS400 after TMCP

and the coiling temperature was around 450 C. The thickness of the sheet products was about 5 mm. Mechanical properties of the sheets were measured in an Instron machine and the microstructures were observed by optical microscope, scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). Electron back-scattered diraction (EBSD) analysis was also carried out. 3. Results 3.1 Mechanical properties Table 2 gives the mechanical properties of the strips. It can be seen that the yield strength of the steel is over 400 MPa, which is much higher than that after conventional TMCP (200300 MPa). The tensile strength also increases and the elongation is reasonable. Tensile testing also shows that the mechanical properties are quite homogeneous along the whole sheet. 3.2 Microstructure Figure 1 is the optical microstructures of the steel

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Table 1 Chemical composition of the SS400 steel (wt pct) C 0.0850.12 Mn 1.14117 Si 0.180.19 P 0.0015 S 0.060 Al 0.038 N 0.006

Table 2 Mechanical properties of the SS400 steel Yield strength, s /MPa 420450 Tensile strength, b /MPa 520550 s /b 0.810.82 Elongation, 5 /% 2836 Cold bending qualied

Fig.2 TEM photographs of ferrite grains taken from two dierent zones

Fig.3 Orientation mapping and distribution of steels after TMCP with dierent nishing rolling temperatures of 800 C (a) and 880 C (b)

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strip. It can be seen that the major constituents are ferrite and pearlite. Quantitative analysis indicates that the volume percentage of ferrite grains is about 70% and the grain size of ferrite grains is around 45 m. Figure 2 shows the TEM images of ferrite grains in the steel strips. Figure 2(a) and (b) were taken from dierent zones. Many dislocations can be found in ferrite grains and there is a small grain A at the boundary between two grains B and C. Diraction pattern analysis shows that A and C belong to dierent zone axes and the angle between them is 29.5 , indicating that the boundary between these two grains is a large angle. While grains A and B belong to the same zone axis, it shows that grain A came out from grain B. EBSD results of the studied steel after hot rolling are shown in Fig.3(a). Many low angle grain boundaries appear in the strip with low nishing rolling temperature (800 C) and <111> texture is quite strong (dark grains). For comparison, EBSD results for a conventional strip when nishing rolling temperature was relatively high (880 C) are shown in Fig.3(b). It can be seen that there are a few low angle grain boundaries and the texture is not obvious. 4. Discussion TMCP has been successfully industrialized in modern steel mills and the grain size of ferrite in the conventional TMCP is around 1020 m and the yield strength of SS400 is generally 200300 MPa. In the present work, the rolling temperatures in the nishing rolling mills were lower than those in conventional TMCP and the ferrite grain size was smaller. Therefore, the strength of the steel increased to a large extent and the ductility was still reasonable, which is the characteristics of ne grain materials. Usually, conventional hot rolling is carried out in single phase region and people only pay attention to rolling temperature, stress-strain relationship and the quality control of the products, not to the phase transformation. But nowadays, much work has been done in the phase transformation during hot deformation. The features of deformation induced transformation ferrite were summarized[13,14] , including: (1) the transformation is dynamic, which is induced by the stored energy during hot rolling, not after rolling during cooling process; (2) nucleation occurs in the phase transformation, rst at grain boundaries, which have high distortion energy, and then in high distortion areas within grains (slip bands and subgrain boundaries); (3) the ferrite grains are very ne; (4) the transformation is fast, which could occur during continuous rolling and (5) DIFT is accompanied with dynamic recrystallization in continuous rolling. From our earlier study, the amount of deformation induced ferrite grains is around 15% in a single pass compression in a temperature range between Ar3 and Ad3 [15] . According to this, it can be deduced that the amount of the deformation induced ferrite grains in the present work would be less than 50% among the total ferrite grains since the temperatures in the last 3 nish rolling stands were in the temperature range for DIFT. When ferrite grains appeared, they would undergo further deformation. This is why many dislocations could be found in ferrite grains. When the

strain has been accumulated to some extent, dynamic recrystallization would occur in ferrite grains. Small grain A in Fig.2 can be considered as a new recrystallizaion nuclei. The dislocation density in the front of the nuclei is higher than that in the other side and the nuclei would grow by absorbing the defects. The existence of large amount of subgrains proven by EBSD analysis reveals that part of ferrite grains formed in the rolling process at low nishing rolling temperature (800 C). High angle grain boundaries were dominant at higher nishing rolling temperature (880 C), which indicates that these ferrite grains formed during the subsequent cooling process. From Fig.3(a), it can also be found that preferred orientation existed, which means the deformed structure is dominant. Therefore, hot rolling schedule needs to be modied to attain isotropic and deformation free microstructures. This should be investigated further. Ferrite with bcc structure has a relatively high stacking fault energy and dynamic recovery occurs during hot deformation according to the traditional idea of physical metallurgy. But several investigations revealed that dynamic recrystallization did occur in low carbon steel, and in IF steel[11,16,17] . This work also gives an evidence for ferrite dynamic recrystallization. When the nishing rolling is done, only part of austenite transformed to ferrite. The retained austenite with large deformation possessed a quite high energy, which could not be released by hot relaxation and elastic recovery. This part of energy could become part of the free energy in suitable conditions and increase the driving force for phase transformation. During the cooling process, this part of austenite partly transformed to ne ferrite because of the high energy and fast cooling rate and partly transformed to pearlite and also a little bainite since the coiling temperature was relatively low. The increase in the strength of the steel in the present work is mainly due to the renement of the ferrite grains. It is not necessary to pursue very high volume of deformation induced ferrite grains, and the key is to control the combination of DIFT, dynamic recrystallization and cooling process. In Table 2, it can be found that the ratio of yield strength to tensile strength of hot rolled strip is higher than 0.8. If lower value of this ratio is needed, the nishing hot rolling temperature and coiling temperature should be optimized to attain more bainite since ultrane ferrite grains make contribution mainly to the yield strength and the hard bainite which forms at a lower temperature will make the tensile strength of the strip increase obviously. 5. Conclusions (1) The yield strength is over 400 MPa and the tensile strength reaches 500 MPa in an ultrane grained SS400 steel in an industrial state when the nishing rolling temperature is lower than 800 C and the coiling temperature is around 450 C. (2) The microstructural observation reveals that the ultrane grained SS400 steel mainly consists of ferrite and pearlite. The grain size of ferrite grains is 45 m and it takes volume percentage of about 70%.

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(3) The ultrane ferrite grains result from three processes: deformation induced ferrite transformation, ferrite dynamic recrystallization and phase transformation in the cooling process. The increase in strength of the studied steel is mainly due to the grain rening of ferrite.

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