Abstract
Hot rolled steels with different C contents ranging from 0.14% to 0.72% were subjected to hot band annealing, where two annealing conditions were applied in order to regulate the distribution and size of cementite. These steels were cold rolled and box annealed for recrystallization. The recovery and recrystallization process during annealing was investigated.
When cementite was coarsened prior to cold rolling, the recrystallization temperature was lowered by the increase of C contents. This was attributed to the acceleration of random nucleation of recrystallized grains in the vicinity of coarse cementite which increased with the C content. In each steel, the texture tended to become random during recrystallization in the final annealing. On the other hand, when cementite is fine, the recrystallization temperature became high. In this case, the increase of C content causes a rise in recrystallization temperature, and the components in the cold-rolling texture were retained even after primary recrystallization. Large amount of fine cementite would have depressed the growth of recrystallized grain.
