Effects of Austenitizing Temperature and Cooling Rate on Precipitation Behavior and Tensile Properties of Pressure Vessel Steels

The effects of austenitizing temperature and cooling rate on precipitation behavior and tensile properties were investigated in an Mn-Mo-Nb-V pressure vessel steel. During austenitizing, it was shown that the austenite coarsening was somewhat suppressed by undissolved NbC. After cooling from austenitizing, the microstructure of all the steels mainly consisted of upper bainite. However, the steel comprised a little lower bainite and martensite in the case of aqua oil quenching from 1000oC, which would be due to increased hardenability by partly dissolved Nb and comparatively large austenite grains. The average size of NbC in austenite at higher temperature was analyzed to be smaller than that at lower temperature because of the more dissolution. It was found that the NbC did not grow much during fast cooling from austenitizing. Meanwhile, the NbC grew much during slow cooling, probably due to wide temperature range of cooling and sufficiently long time for NbC to grow. It was conjectured the V precipitates newly formed and/or grew during cooling from austenitizing and during tempering. On the other hand, the formation of NbC was almost completed before tempering and little more precipitated during tempering. Among the tempered steels, the steel which was fast cooled from 1000oC showed the highest tensile strength, which seemed to come from the microstructure of fine upper bainite and some low temperature phases as well as the comparatively fine NbC precipitates. (Received January 4, 2015; Revised January 7, 2015; Accepted January 12, 2015)