Tensile Work Hardening Modeling of Precipitation Strengthened Nb-Microalloyed Steels

Very often Nb contributes to the strength of a microalloyed steel beyond the expected level due to the grain size strengthening resulting from thermomechanical processing. Two different mechanisms are behind this phenomenon, and both of them have to do with the amount of Nb remaining in the solution after hot rolling. The first of them is the increase of the hardenability of the steel due to Nb, and the second one is the fine precipitation of NbC in ferrite. The contribution of the precipitates to the work hardening of two thermally and thermomechanically processed microalloyed steels is addressed in this work and this contribution has been integrated into previously developed models by the authors for ferrite–pearlite microstructures. An L eff is considered through the effective spacing associated to the different obstacles and their interactions with the moving dislocations. The model obtained shows good agreement with the experimental tensile curves from the end of yield point elongation to the onset of necking.