Thermo-stability of ultra-fine non-equilibrium microstructures

The evolution of the microstructures and hardness of a bainitic plate steel during tempering at 650℃ has been investigated.The steel was manufactured by RPC (relaxation-precipitation controlling phase transformation) technique. A part of the plate was reheated to 930℃ and held for 1 h before quenched into water (RQ). No obvious change was detected by means of optical microscopy in the RPC steel tempering for 0.5 h, while dislocation cells were formed inside the bainite laths, accompanied by an obvious drop of hardness. The bainite laths started to coalesce in some regions, but the sample hardness kept nearly constant during tempering from 1 to 7 h. With further tempering, polygonal ferrite was formed in local regions while the hardness decreased dramatically. The RQ samples softened faster during tempering and finally transformed into the polygonal ferrite completely. These results indicate that the thermo-stability of fine non-equilibrium microstructures is tightly related to their history.