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Kinetics of the pearlite to austenite reversion transformation

University of British Columbia

The pearlite-to-austenite reversion transformation kinetics under isothermal and continuous heating conditions in a eutectoid plain-carbon steel have been measured, using a dilatometric technique on a Gleeble 1500 Thermomechanical Simulator. The isothermal data was characterized in terms of the transformation start time at temperature for the onset of the P→ γ transformation, and in terms of the Avrami parameters n and b. Under the assumption that the P→ γ transformation was additive, the Scheil equation was applied to the measured isothermal transformation start data to predict the onset of the transformation on continuous heating, and the isothermal phase transformation kinetics were used to predict the continuous heating kinetics. It was found that the kinetic model significantly underpredicted the transformation start time during continuous heating. This was attributed to the large experimental error inherent in the estimation of the isothermal transformation start time, t[formula omitted]. The model's continuous heating kinetic predictions were excellent at low heating rates, but it tended to overpredict the kinetics at higher heating rates. The problem was traced to an observed difference between the measured temperature and the programmed temperature during the high heating rate tests. When the model was modified to incorporate the actual temperature profile, its prediction of the kinetics was considerably improved. Thus the austenite reversion transformation was concluded to be experimentally additive. An average Avrami n value of 2.2 suggested that austenite was nucleating on pearlite colony corners and edges. This conclusion was verified with optical and scanning electron microscopy. Previously published data, which indicated that the pearlite-to-austenite transformation is isokinetic, was found to be based on questionable assumptions. Metallographic information suggests, however, that the nucleation sites are saturated early in the reaction. Furthermore, the isothermal austenite formation data generated in this work was found to meet the effective site saturation criterion for additivity, implying that the austenitization process would be expected to be additive. The effect of starting microstructure was evaluated by performing isothermal and continuous heating tests on two different pearlitic microstructures. It was found that, in agreement with published results, the transformation rate varied in inverse proportion with the pearlite spacing and colony size.

Text

2010-11-02

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/29739

Materials Engineering

University of British Columbia

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