from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
The influence of relatively high heating rates (100 - 300°C/s) and low soaking times (5s) on the microstructure and mechanical properties of a cold rolled low carbon steel was studied. Annealing treatments with different heating rates were performed on a 0.15C - 1.2Mn (wt.%) steel in order to study recrystallization, austenite transformation and growth of ferrite and austenite. Impact of heating rate was also analyzed in terms of mechanical properties: hardness and tensile tests were performed after different steps of annealing cycle. Influence of intermediate slow heating at high temperatures was also investigated. Increase of the heating rate leads to a partial recrystallization at the intercritical temperature, formation of high austenite fraction and lower ferrite grain size. The introduction of intermediate slow heating at high temperatures and a short soaking significantly reduce the effects of high heating rates. Finally, high heating rates promoted a slight increase in the ultimate tensile strength without any considerable changes in the other tensile properties.
Keywords: fast heating rate, intercritical annealing, phase transformation, low carbon steels© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.