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In steel it produces a bainite microstructure whereas in cast irons it produces a structure of acicular ferrite and high carbon, stabilized austenite known as ausferrite. It is primarily used to improve mechanical properties or reduce / eliminate distortion. Austempering is defined by both the process and the resultant microstructure.
Bainite is a plate-like microstructure that forms in steels at temperatures of 125–550 °C (depending on alloy content). [1] First described by E. S. Davenport and Edgar Bain, [2] [3] it is one of the products that may form when austenite (the face-centered cubic crystal structure of iron) is cooled past a temperature where it is no longer thermodynamically stable with respect to ferrite ...
This microstructure is advantageous over other microstructures for steel because of its chaotic ordering, which increases toughness. [ 1 ] Acicular ferrite is formed in the interior of the original austenitic grains by direct nucleation on the inclusions, resulting in randomly oriented short ferrite needles with a 'basket weave' appearance.
The properties of steel depend on its microstructure: the arrangement of different phases, some harder, some with greater ductility. At the atomic level, the four phases of auto steel include martensite (the hardest yet most brittle), bainite (less hard), ferrite (more ductile), and austenite (the most ductile). The phases are arranged by ...
Eutectoid steel can in principle be transformed completely into pearlite; hypoeutectoid steels can also be completely pearlitic if transformed at a temperature below the normal eutectoid. [6] [7] Pearlite can be hard and strong but is not particularly tough. It can be wear-resistant because of a strong lamellar network of ferrite and cementite.
For a eutectoid steel (0.76% C), between 6 and 10% of austenite, called retained austenite, will remain. The percentage of retained austenite increases from insignificant for less than 0.6% C steel, to 13% retained austenite at 0.95% C and 30–47% retained austenite for a 1.4% carbon steel. A very rapid quench is essential to create martensite.
TRIP steels possess a microstructure consisting of austenite with sufficient thermodynamic instability such that transformation to martensite is achieved during loading or deformation. Many automotive TRIP steels possess retained austenite within a ferrite matrix, which may also contain hard phases like bainite and martensite. [2]
Metallography allows the metallurgist to study the microstructure of metals. A micrograph of bronze revealing a cast dendritic structure Al-Si microstructure. Microstructure is the very small scale structure of a material, defined as the structure of a prepared surface of material as revealed by an optical microscope above 25× magnification. [1]