Influence of Carbide Particles on the Grain Growth of Ferrite in an Fe–0.1C–0.09V Alloy

Abstract

The pinning effects of carbide particles on the grain growth of ferrite were studied in an Fe–0.1C–0.09V alloy. The distribution of real particle sizes in touch with grain boundary was determined coupling the measurement of diameters of the largest section of each particle on multiple sections with computer simulation. This procedure can improve remarkably the accuracy in evaluating the number of particles in the system composed of particles of widely varying sizes. The particle numbers in contact with grain boundary faces, edges and corners were considerably greater than those calculated assuming random distribution. The theory that all particles pin grain boundaries, Nishizawa et al.’s correlation model and a modified Hunderi-Ryum’s model are able to predict the grain size in fair agreement with experiment. A better account for final grain size was given by the mean size of particles in contact with grain boundaries rather than that of all particles probably because the particle size was highly non-uniform due to the formation of cementite and vanadium carbide.