2001 Volume 41 Issue 5 Pages 484-491
The existing approaches to the detection of precipitation are largely based on room temperature measurements on quenched samples. However, the direct measurement of precipitation kinetics at high temperatures is also possible through analysis of the mechanical properties of the specimens. In this work, a creep method was developed and applied to the detection of aluminum nitride precipitation in a dual phase 3% silicon steel containing 0.038 % C. Prior to loading, the specimens were solution treated for 20 min and then cooled to the test temperature. A constant stress was applied to each sample by means of a computerized MTS machine and the strain was recorded continuously during testing. Microstructural examination revealed that the austenite fraction and morphology and the microstructure of the ferrite matrix are quite different depending on whether samples are directly heated or heated and then cooled to the test temperature. The resulting creep rate is sensitive both to the occurrence of precipitation as well as to phase transformation; when the microstructure remains fixed, the slope of the true strain–log(time) curve decreases immediately after the initiation of precipitation. The precipitation-time-temperature diagrams determined in this way are of classical C shape.
