Austenite Formation and Decomposition Edited by E. Buddy Damm and Matthew J.

Merwin The Iron & Steel Society (ISS) and TMS (The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society), 2003

THE BAY PHENOMENON IN STEELS WITH REASONABLY STRONG CARBIDE FORMERS

M. Hillert, L. Hglund Dept. Materials Science and Engineering, KTH, SE-10044 Stockholm, Sweden Abstract The resistance to growth of acicular ferrite, i.e. Widmansttten and bainitic ferrite, was recently analyzed in terms of energy barriers, one for the Fe-C system and others for individual alloying elements. The barrier caused by Mo is now reanalyzed as a function of temperature and it seems to have a maximum at about 600C. That function is used to predict the carbon content of austenite, remaining after the formation of acicular ferrite has stopped, and no difference is made between Widmansttten ferrite and bainitic ferrite as long as no carbides form. The diffusion-controlled lengthening rate can then be calculated as a function of temperature. For 0.9 mass% Mo a single C curve is obtained for all carbon contents but for 1.8 mass% Mo and 0.10 mass% C two separate C curves are found, a low temperature curve for bainitic ferrite and a high temperature curve for Widmansttten ferrite and with a bay in between. At increasing carbon contents the upper curve moves rapidly towards low growth rates and has disappeared at 0.20 mass% C. This is in general agreement with experimental information, which lends some credibility to the energy barrier evaluated for Mo. It is proposed that its variation with temperature should be used as a guide-line if one would try to develop a quantitative solute drag theory for explaining the bay phenomenon. It is also proposed that the same effect operates for Cr and W, which are also reasonably strong carbide formers. Introduction For a long time there have been two conflicting hypotheses regarding the nature of the acicular decomposition product of austenite in steels called bainite [1]. It is composed of ferrite and carbide and may thus be classified as a eutectoid product but by its acicular shape it differs radically from the ordinary eutectoid structure in steels, called pearlite. One hypothesis is based on the assumption that the formation of bainitic ferrite is not only partitionless, which means that it inherits all the carbon content of the parent austenite, but also diffusionless, which here means that there is no diffusion of carbon, not even locally. It results in the prediction that the line of equal Gibbs energy of ferrite and austenite in the phase diagram, T0, is the upper limit of the formation of bainite. On the other hand, Widmansttten ferrite, which is also acicular, is assumed to grow with a low carbon content. The other hypothesis is based on the assumption that bainitic ferrite is intimately related to Widmansttten ferrite, both grow with a low carbon content and the growth is controlled by the rate of carbon diffusion into the parent austenite [2]. These opposite hypotheses have been debated for half a century and the debate is still lively. One of the arguments for the second hypothesis is that kinetic information on the rate of lengthening of Widmansttten ferrite and bainite does not show a break within the range of temperature where the microstructure of the reaction product changes from one to the other [3]. However, this is not true for steels alloyed with reasonably strong carbide formers, mainly Cr, Mo and W. Their TTT diagrams may show separate C curves for the two acicular structures and
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with a bay in between. From the point of view of the second hypothesis it is thus essential to find an explanation of the bay phenomenon without abandoning the idea of a close relation between Widmansttten ferrite and bainitic ferrite. An attempt to define such an explanation will now be presented. The energy barrier to acicular growth There are several definitions of bainite. For the purpose of this paper bainite is defined as acicular ferrite with or without carbides. As a background of the discussion it is necessary first to review the attempts to predict the line in the phase diagram representing the limit of formation of acicular ferrite in the Fe-C system, including both Widmansttten ferrite and bainitic ferrite. It will be denoted WBs. As already mentioned, according to the first hypothesis the limit for bainitic ferrite would primarily be defined by the T0 line but has later been modified to the T0' line, which takes into account an energy barrier caused by the effect of transformation stresses and surface energy [4,5]. Whether one uses the T0 or T0' line, one may note with satisfaction that the result is closer to experimental data than is the extrapolated e3 line, i.e. the extrapolated /+ phase boundary. According to the other hypothesis, the whole difference between the Ae3 line and the experimental data is caused by an energy barrier for acicular growth [6], which would then need to be much larger than in the first case. When evaluated from kinetic information on Fe-C alloys, this energy barrier was denoted FeC [7] and the WBs line used in that evaluation is shown in Fig. 1. It is drawn through the three experimental points using a spline function and it is evident that the predictions based on the T0 or T0' line cannot be used to explain that information. The points at 700 and 300C were obtained by extrapolating lengthening rates to zero using information from Hillert [6] and Speich and Cohen [8], respectively. The point at 450C was obtained from the carbon content of austenite remaining after the formation of acicular ferrite had come to a stop [9].

Figure 1. The critical limit for the formation of acicular ferrite in the Fe-C diagram according to various approaches. From Ref. 7. The squares represent experimental information.

Effect of Mo For steels alloyed with Cr or Mo the predictions based only on the FeC function did not work well. When the energy barrier was evaluated for such steels, the values were higher and the contributions to the energy barrier from Cr and Mo were estimated from the difference in the region 350 to 650C [7]. They were denoted Cr and Mo and it was proposed that they are caused by some solute drag effect. In the thermodynamic calculations the energy barrier composed of FeC and Cr or Mo was added to the Gibbs energy of the growing ferrite. It should be possible, at least in principle, to evaluate experimentally this addition to the barrier for various alloy contents and temperatures and, provided that this proposal is correct, it should be possible to learn more about the solute drag and get better guide-lines for the future development of theoretical treatments of this important effect. An experimental difficulty is that the acicular growth of ferrite in the interesting temperature range has competition from nonacicular transformations and it may not always be easy to establish the limit as defined from the final carbon content of austenite. A possibility would be to study the lengthening rate as function of the carbon content at a given alloy content and extrapolate to zero growth rate. Sufficient experimental information of this kind does not seem to be available today. Nor would it be possible to evaluate the carbon content at the growing tip of a plate of ferrite by analyzing the lengthening rate of a single alloy when the solute drag effect is not known. Instead, some numerical calculations based upon the assumption of an energy barrier will now be presented and they will result in a rationalization of the bay phenomenon without any further theory. The results may help to define what experimental measurements would be most valuable for a future development of a solute drag treatment capable of accounting for the effect of alloying elements on the formation of acicular ferrite in the whole range of temperature. In order to consider the bay phenomenon in Cr and Mo steels it would be necessary to go to much higher temperatures than 650C. The present work concentrated to Mo and Fig. 2 shows the data used for estimating Mo. The main data are those at about 600C. They were evaluated by calculating the final carbon content from the volume fraction of austenite remaining when the formation of acicular ferrite has come to an end for two Fe-Mo-C alloys with almost the

Figure 2. The energy barrier for acicular growth of ferrite due to Mo.

same Mo content, 1.80 and 1.81 mass%, but different carbon content, 0.064 and 0.19 mass%, at a series of temperatures in the region of so-called incomplete transformation just below the bay [10]. A thermodynamic calculation using the "TCFE2 TC Steels/Alloys Database" [11] then gave the height of a Gibbs energy barrier acting on the growing ferrite in order to displace the /+ equilibrium to the measured carbon content. So-called paraequilibrium at the interface was assumed, i.e., no diffusion of alloying elements relative to Fe and same chemical potentials of carbon as well as of a weighted average for the substitutional elements, including Fe, on both sides of the interface. The data at about 400C was obtained in a similar way but using a commercial steel 0.44C;1.74Si;0.67Mn;0.39Cr;0.83Mo;0.09V [12] but it was used only as a guide-line when drawing a curve for 1.80 mass% Mo. The Mn content was used depress the formation of ferrite to lower temperatures and the Si content was necessary for inhibiting the formation of carbides at lower temperatures. A commercial steel was used because no information from laboratory alloy of suitable composition was found. At very high temperatures there is information from the start of Widmansttten ferrite, Ws. The point at 855C (58 J/mol) was obtained from a steel 0.11C;1.95Mo [13]. It is rather uncertain exactly how to draw the curve for 1.80 mass% Mo from this collection of information but the inverted C curve is unavoidable once it is accepted that the information from Ws at high temperatures and from bainitic ferrite at intermediate and low temperatures should be represented by a single curve. In any case, the curve presented in Fig. 2 was used to calculate the carbon content of in equilibrium with when the Gibbs energy of was increased by = FeC + Mo, where FeC was taken from the previous study [7]. Fig. 3 illustrates how this equilibrium carbon content was predicted to vary with temperature, and curves for other Mo contents than 1.80 mass% were obtained by assuming that Mo is proportional to the Mo content. A vertical line would represent a fixed carbon content and it would intersect the curve for 1.80 mass% Mo in one or three points. For 0.2 mass% C or more, there will be only one intersection and it will represent the Bs temperature. There will be three intersections for a carbon content of 0.1 mass% as shown in the diagram. The lowest one will again represent Bs and the highest one will have a similar interpretation but will be denoted Ws because the acicular structure is there regarded as Widmansttten ferrite. That structure is predicted to form only between this Ws temperature and the third intersection (between the other two). Widmansttten ferrite is thus predicted to have a C curve between

Figure 3. Calculated values of the critical carbon content for acicular growth of ferrite in steels with various Mo contents, as function of temperature.
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these two temperatures and bainitic ferrite will have a separate C curve below Bs. This modeling has thus demonstrated that it is possible to predict separate C curves for Widmansttten ferrite and bainitic ferrite without accepting any fundamental difference between the two kinds of acicular ferrite. It is predicted that no acicular ferrite can form between the two C curves, i.e., at temperatures between the two lower intersections. For 2.70 mass% Mo there would be only one intersection above which the curve will even show nonphysical negative values. It is thus predicted that acicular ferrite can only form below that intersection and there will be no C curve for Widmansttten ferrite at higher temperatures for such a high Mo content. If the energy barrier had not been included, these calculations would have given the Ae3 lines for various Mo contents they would have fallen to the right of Ae3 for the Fe-C system, presented in Fig. 1 because Mo is a ferrite stabilizer. For each temperature Fig. 3 yields a difference in carbon content, c mass%, between the / interface and the interior of the austenite from the difference between the curve and the carbon content of the steel. According to a simple approach to plate-like growth [2] the lengthening rate can be estimated as 60000DT(c)2/co m/s, where D is the diffusion coefficient of carbon in austenite, co is the mass% of carbon in the steel and is the specific interfacial energy, here assumed to be 0.1 J/m2, a value which may seem reasonable if the interface has a high degree of coherency. The lengthening rate was thus evaluated and is plotted logarithmically in Fig. 4 and it shows the predicted bay. The diffusion coefficient of carbon in is known to vary strongly with the carbon content. For simplicity, it was here evaluated for the carbon content calculated for the interface in each case and information was taken from gren [14].
900
0.10

800

0.15

Temperature (oC)

700 600 500 400

Pure FeC with 0.10 C 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.50

300 200 101 100 v m/s 10-1 10-2

Figure 4. The calculated lengthening rate of acicular ferrite in steels with 1.8 mass% Mo and various carbon contents. The calculated curve for pure Fe-C with 0.10 mass% C is included for comparison. Assuming that the ferrite formation below Bs will stop when the average carbon content of the remaining austenite has reached the value given in Fig. 3, one can directly calculate the final fraction of ferrite. That quantity is presented in Fig. 5, which illustrates the so-called incomplete transformation to bainite.

650 600 550

Bs B30 B50 B60 B70

Temperature(oC)

500 450 400 350 300 250 0

Co=0.05 0.1 for 0.2 0.2

0.5

0.2

0.4 f

0.6

0.8

1.0

Figure 5. The final fraction of acicular ferrite as function of temperature for steels with 1.8 mass% Mo and various carbon contents. Discussion Figs. 4 and 5 indicate that the present model is capable of explaining the main features of the effects of Mo on the lengthening rate of Widmansttten and bainitic ferrite, which plays a major role for the effect of Mo on TTT diagrams of hypoeutectoid steels. It is proposed that the model could just as well be applied to Cr and W. All elements have a thermodynamic effect, which was taken into account in the numerical calculations, but it is only for reasonably strong carbide formers that it has been necessary to evaluate an additional energy barrier. On the other hand, it should be emphasized that the model is still very preliminary. Consequently, it was not attempted to make a critical comparison between predictions and experimental information. At the present stage of development it may be sufficient to conclude that important features have been explained qualitatively. At low temperatures, where Mo is negligible, one could expect to see the purely thermodynamic effect of Mo. However, the curve for 1.8 mass% Mo and 0.1 mass% C approaches the curve at low temperatures for pure Fe-C with 0.1 mass% C, which was also included in Fig. 4. The reason is that the purely thermodynamic effect of Mo on the / equilibrium is weak. On the other hand, it should be emphasized that no attempt was here made to adjust the method of calculating the curves for lengthening rates to give better agreement with experimental information. Any such adjustment would of course affect the curves for Fe-C alloys and Mo steels in a similar fashion and the curves for steels with and without Mo would still approach each other at low temperatures. There could be several reasons for improving the method. For instance, it may be argued that the presence of carbides at the reaction front will increase the growth rate by providing shorter diffusion distances for carbon. That effect was studied by Quidort et al. [15] who found a rate increase by a factor of 3 at 400C in a particular case. It should also be emphasized that the theoretical growth equation used here is based on several simplifications, one being that diffusion backwards through the growing plate of ferrite has been neglected, a process that will allow carbon to escape into the parent austenite from a somewhat larger area of the / interface. Furthermore, the extrapolation of thermodynamical and diffusional data to low temperatures is fairly uncertain. A further uncertainty relates to the value of the interfacial energy.

The resistance to acicular growth of ferrite in steels has here been interpreted as caused by energy barriers but no physical model of their origin has been used. However, it would seem attractive to assume that the effect of Mo is caused by solute drag. It would then be realized that solute drag should vary with the rate of migration of the phase interface, i.e., the energy barriers should depend on the rate and not just have a single value at each temperature. It would thus be necessary to accept that the values of the barrier estimated in the present work refer only to rates characteristic of the experimental techniques behind the information used. In principle, all three ways of estimating the barriers from experimental information are concerned with zero growth rate but in reality all observations of ferrite formation require some growth rate. To analyze the possible variation of a barrier with growth rate requires more detailed information than is available today. Instead, one could attempt to analyze the variation with temperature under the assumption that the experimental information refers to approximately the same growth rate at different temperatures. Some very rough estimates will now be made. When applying solute drag for explaining the energy barrier caused by Mo, Mo, one should first examine where the maximum falls. A constant diffusivity in the interface has been used in simple treatments of solute drag and the maximum then falls at a rate of about v = D/d, where d is the atomic jump distance [16]. For a rate of 1 m/s and a jump distance of 0.1 nm one would predict a solute drag maximum at a temperature where D is equal to 10-16 m2/s. For ordinary grain boundary diffusion there is information on D, where is the width of that part of the interface where the constant D value is supposed to hold. Assuming that is 1 nm, we find that D would need to be 10-25 m3/s. For substitutional diffusion in Fe that value is found for diffusion along grain boundaries at about 400C [17] but the maximum in Fig. 2 falls at about 630C. It thus seems that a solute drag effect could be the explanation only if the diffusivity across the / interface is considerably lower than for diffusion along grain boundaries. On the other hand, even though it may be reasonable to compare the diffusivity in an incoherent / interface to that in an ordinary grain boundary, it should be noted that the / interface of a Widmansttten plate has a high degree of coherency. Its atomic arrangement is much more regular than in an ordinary grain boundary. It may thus be possible that its diffusivity is several orders of magnitute lower but it is not evident how it could be measured by independent experiments. One should also note the possible difference between diffusion along a boundary, as in experimental studies of grain boundary diffusion, and across the boundary, as in solute drag. It would thus be difficult to draw conclusions from this test. Next, one should examine the width of the curve in Fig. 2. It yields 50% of the maximum value at about 405 and 750C but it must be emphasized that the positions of those points are not well established by the experimental information. By comparing with a curve for solute drag calculated for a constant diffusivity [16] it is found that the rates would have to differ by a factor of 20. If instead the diffusivity is different but the rate is the same, this should require an activation energy for interface diffusion of RT1 T2 Q= ln 20 = 50kJ / mol (1) T2 T1

if nothing else varies with temperature. This is lower than for grain boundary diffusion in Fe, which is about 155 kJ/mol [17]. In terms of solute drag a large discrepancy could easily be explained by a variation of the diffusivity through the interface. In a particular case of such modeling it was found that the maximum could be very flat and the rates would differ by a factor 109 instead of 20 between the two points of 50% of the maximum [16]. That would yield a temperature dependence corresponding to an activation energy of 350 kJ/mol. It thus seems possible to explain very different values of the factor, i.e. of the apparent activation energy, by manipulating the variation of the diffusivity through the interface. If the assumption of constant
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diffusivity turns out to be insufficient after a possible revision with the use of better information, the shape of the improved curve from Fig. 2 could be useful as a guide-line for the construction of a solute drag treatment for a variable diffusion coefficient. It should further be emphasized that the barrier due to Mo may very well vary with the carbon content but that would naturally be included through the thermodynamic description of the system in any ambitious solute drag treatment. In the present work, all the evaluations of the energy barrier were based on the assumption of paraequilibrium, which would probably be a reasonable approximation at fairly low temperatures and the alloying elements would there have their lowest influence. As atomic mobilities of substitutional elements grow important at increasing temperatures, it will first be noticeable inside the interface and result in a solute drag effect. At the same time, there will be a growing difference in alloy content between the two sides of the interface and that will result in a positive or negative pile-up in front of the migrating interface, a so-called spike. The spike will be pushed forward by diffusion and that will require a driving force, which should be added to the solute drag or may be regarded as part of it. At very high temperatures, the diffusivity inside the interface may be so high that it requires only a negligible amount of driving force but, instead, the spike will require more driving force at increasing temperatures as its height is building up and will approach a maximum at high temperatures. By allowing the curve in Fig. 2 to approach low values at high temperatures, it was assumed that the effect of the spike is negligible for Mo, which may be reasonable for Mo being a ferrite stabilizer in the absence of carbon, an effect that will decrease in the presence of carbon. On the other hand, the spike should certainly be very important for austenite stabilizers. The transition to full local equilibrium at high temperatures and low growth rates should be an important topic in future studies, in particular for Mn and Ni. So far we have only discussed the acicular kind of ferrite. When the supersaturation is low at high temperatures the grain boundary allotriomorph predominates, probably due to a lower energy barrier for growth. Below the Ws temperature Widmansttten ferrite will appear and it will soon predominate in low carbon steels. However, in steels with reasonably strong carbide formers the allotriomorph will again predominate when the temperature is decreased further and there will be no Widmansttten ferrite when the bay is approached. This change of roles cannot be caused by Mo promoting the growth of allotriomorphic ferrite because the rate of transformation to ferrite is here lower than in a corresponding steel without Mo. The conclusion must be that Mo here retards both types of ferrite but acicular ferrite more than allotriomorphic ferrite. The probable explanation is the presence of Mo-rich carbides within the allotriomorphs when that form returns. The primary function of the carbide particles would probably be to drain the / interfaces of Mo and thus decrease the retarding effect of Mo. A contributing factor could be that the amount of carbon to diffuse away into the austenite decreases when some of it is tied up in the alloy carbide particles but that may not be an important effect because the growth rate is slow compared to the diffusivity of carbon. At temperatures close to the bay the Mo-rich carbides are very fine and were not discovered until electron microscopy became available. However, at higher temperatures they are coarser and clearly revealed in the light microscope by making the structure dark etching. The fact that the ferrite constituent of this two-phase structure is closely related to ordinary allotriomorphic ferrite was clearly demonstrated by Relander [19] who studied a steel with 0.18 mass% C, 0.27 mass% Mn and 1.96 mass% Mo. For that steel there was no range of temperature where Widmansttten dominated and at 770C he could observe a primary formation of grain boundary allotriomorph with a dark etching rim, caused by the co-precipitation of ferrite and Mo-rich carbide when the carbon content of the austenite had increased enough by ferrite precipitation. At lower temperatures that rim appeared earlier and grew much thicker and it is significant that it was the same grain of ferrite that developed into the two-phase product and it
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also grew with the same shape as before. That is why the two-phase product has here been described as allotriomorphic ferrite. It was recently defined as bainite because it is a nonlamellar mixture of ferrite and carbide [20] but that kind of definition does not seem to be useful in the present case. Here, bainite is defined as a mixture of acicular ferrite and carbide. The carbide studied by Relander was mainly fibrous. Honeycombe [21] has reviewed the studies of another type, so-called row carbide, formed by interface precipitation. Close to the bay yet another type of allotriomorph appears, first described by Hultgren [22] as wrinkled ferrite. It has been found to be very rich in dislocations and Purdy [23] called it dislocated ferrite. It has not been proved that any form of carbide is a prerequisite for this structure but that was speculated by Purdy. From the point of view of the present analysis, it is now proposed that Mo is tied up in this structure as well as in the other two, either by an extremely fine carbide precipitation on the dislocations or directly on the dislocations. Purdy proposed that a possible explanation of the slow growth when the bay is approached is the requirement of Mo diffusion at the front. That explanation was again used recently by Hackenberg and Shiflet who explicitly ruled out the role of solute drag as an explanation of the bay [20]. Of course, it is true that the rate of growth of ferrite together with Mo-rich carbide must be limited by the slow diffusion of Mo but the important question is why the growth of ferrite would have to wait for the slow precipitation of the Mo-rich carbide. The answer is that both phases profit by the formation of the other, a fact that is evident from the regularity of the structure, a well-known characteristic of products of cooperative eutectic reactions. It seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the growth of allotriomorphic ferrite is retarded by the presence of Mo in a similar fashion as for acicular ferrite although the retardation is decreased by Mo being drained to the carbide particles at the interface. As discussed already long ago, the reason may be a strong solute drag on the / interface by Mo, either alone [18] or in combination with carbon [24]. It is interesting to note that Purdy [23] mentioned solute drag as a possibility whereas Hackenberg et al. [20] ruled out solute drag effects in this regard, probably because they did not consider why ferrite would have to wait for carbide to form. It is interesting to note that Hultgren [25], when introducing the concept of paraequilibrium, proposed that acicular ferrite in the lower temperature range, i.e. bainitic ferrite, would grow under paraequilibrium. He called it paraferrite and emphasized that it would have its own C curve with a maximum temperature in the intermediate range. He further proposed that at higher temperatures ferrite would grow under ordinary equilibrium, which he called orthoequilibrium and thus he there used the term orthoferrite. The different kinetic behaviour of the two kinds of ferrite, which results in separate C curves, were thus made responsible for the bay in the TTT diagram. He also proposed that pearlite forms under orthoequilibrium. Later [22], he confirmed with chemical analysis that pearlitic cementite in fact has the composition expected from full equilibrium whereas bainitic cementite has inherited the alloy composition of the austenite, which indicates that bainitic ferrite also has. Hultgren's description based on two separate C curves is really rather close to the description given here. The main difference is that Hultgren only considered the two extreme cases, perfect paraequilibrium and full equilibrium but his work inspired the introduction of the concept of partitionless growth under full local equilibrium, which is made possible by the build-up of a spike of the alloying elements in front of the migrating interface [26]. Furthermore, the idea of a variable deviation from local equilibrium at the migrating interface due to diffusion in the interface (now called solute drag), which can be used to model the transition between diffusionless transformation and transformation under full local equilibrium, was introduced later [6] in a consideration of the behavior of carbon. In order to test Hultgren's view, Aaronson [27] measured the alloy content of ferrite from 800 to 500C in a Cr steel, finding that ferrite had inherited the alloy content of the austenite at all
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these temperatures, and he concluded that the bay phenomenon cannot be explained by Hultgren's proposal of separate C curves for paraferrite and orthoferrite. However, one could argue that the existence of the bay and Aaronson's result are both explained by separate C curves for ferrite growing under paraequilibrium and under local full equilibrium, respectively, but behind a spike in the latter case. That would come very close to Hultgren's picture. As demonstrated in the present work, the existence of two C curves is now explained by an effect of a variable deviation from local equilibrium rather than by the sharp change from paraequilibrium to full local equilibrium proposed by Hultgren. It is evident that it was the observation of two separate C curves for ferrite in steels alloyed with Cr, Mo or W that inspired Hultgren to introduce the concept of paraequilibrium. It should be noted that the existence of two separate C curves was also the inspiration for Zener [28] when he proposed that bainitic ferrite inherits the carbon content of the parent austenite. Evidently, he was not aware of the common C curve for low alloy steels. From his point of view, it should thus be necessary to explain why the two C curves seem to merge into one at low alloy contents, a fact that is self-evident from Hultgren's picture. That question does not yet seem to have been addressed by Zener's followers.
Summary

If bainitic ferrite grows with a low carbon content and is not much different from Widmansttten ferrite, one should expect a common C curve for the two types of acicular ferrite. This is also observed in low alloy steels. It would thus seem essential to find an explanation of the appearance of two separate C curves with a bay between them in steels with Cr, Mo or W. The experimentally established effects of Mo have now been analyzed and a semi-quantitative treatment is given, which seems capable of describing the main features of the effect of Mo on the formation of acicular ferrite without abandoning the idea of a close relation between Widmansttten ferrite and bainitic ferrite. The following conclusions have been drawn and it is proposed that they apply to Cr and W, as well as to Mo. 1) The bay in hypoeutectoid steels with reasonably strong carbide formers depends primarily on these alloying elements retarding the growth of acicular ferrite at intermediate temperatures. 2) The growth of allotriomorphic ferrite is also retarded but that effect is weaker due to the draining of those elements to carbides forming at the migrating / interface. 3) Below the bay the retarding effect is weaker and acicular ferrite then grows faster than allotriomorphic ferrite, which will soon stop forming. Together with carbides of lower alloy contents, the acicular ferrite soon forms bainite. 4) The effect of the alloying elements on the growth rate of bainite decreases towards lower temperatures where only the purely thermodynamic effect will remain. That effect is fairly low for the reasonably strong carbide forming elements, which are all ferrite stabilizers. The analysis of experimental information in the present work was not based on any particular solute drag treatment. Instead, experimental information was analyzed in order to find what predictions a solute drag treatment should make in order to describe the information. It is hoped that further work along these lines, preferably based on more critical measurements, could give better guide-lines for the future theoretical work on solute drag. Two conclusions were drawn from some very rough applications of a simple solute drag treatment. First, the value of the diffusion coefficient across the interface of acicular ferrite to austenite should be chosen much lower than for diffusion along grain boundaries. Secondly, it may be necessary to let the diffusivity vary through the interface.

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References

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