Kinetics of Precipitation Behavior of Second Phase Particles in Ferritic Ti-Mo Microalloyed Steel

Abstract Two types of stress relaxation tests were carried out to investigate the incubation time for incipient precipitation of Ti(C,N) in deformed austenite and (Ti, Mo)C in ferrite of ferritic Ti-Mo microalloyed steel. The size distribution, amount and chemical composition of precipitates were obtained by using physicochemical phase analysis, and calculated according to thermodynamics and kinetics. The experimental results demonstrated that the incubation time was reduced with increasing Ti content, and prolonged with the addition of Mo. After 30% deformation at 850 °C, the nucleation of strain-induced Ti(C,N) was a relatively slow process. On the other hand, the temperature where the nucleation rate of (Ti, Mo)C in ferrite was the highest descended first and then ascended with increasing Ti content, and so did the temperature where the incubation time was the shortest. The key point is that the temperature of steel containing about 0. 09% Ti is the lowest. The mass fraction of MC-type particles with size smaller than 10 nm in steel containing 0. 09% Ti and 0. 2% Mo reached 73. 7%. The size distributions of precipitates in steel containing 0. 09% Ti were relatively concentrated compared with that in steel containing 0. 07% Ti.