Spheroidization annealing is a heat treatment process aimed at changing the morphology of the cementite (Fe3C) in pearlite from lamellar to spherical, thereby improving the formability of the steel and its machinability. The objective of the master thesis was to optimize the spheroidization annealing of 50Mn7 steel in order to reduce the annealing time while achieving a higher spheroidization percentage.
We investigated how the initial microstructure of the steel before spheroidization annealing affects the rate of spheroidization and the hardness achieved. In the first phase, we used the dilatometric method to determine the transformation temperature points Ac1, Ac3, Ar3, and Ar1. Based on these points, we selected different heat treatment regimes for the steel. We prepared and analyzed samples with different initial microstructures: hot rolled, normalized, quenched from 800 °C (martensite), quenched from the two-phase region at 740 °C (martensite-ferrite), and isothermally transformed into bainite by quenching from 900 °C in a salt bath at 370 °C with an isothermal holding time of 20 minutes.
Microscopic analyses revealed that during spheroidization annealing below the Ac1 temperature, the hot-rolled microstructure spheroidizes most slowly, while the martensite and bainite structures spheroidize most rapidly, with the smallest cementite particles, homogeneously distributed in the crystal grains. However, a challenge with shorter spheroidization times below the Ac1 temperature for quenched and bainite structures is the excessively high final hardness of the steel. Two-step spheroidization of bainitic or martensite structures with short annealing above the Ac1 temperature followed by annealing just below the austenite transformation temperature into proeutectoid ferrite (Ar3') significantly reduces the hardness after only 10 hours of annealing. However, in this case, both the grain size and cementite particle size will increase significantly. In cyclic annealing, both the upper and lower temperatures of the interval and the heating/cooling rate have a very large effect on the spheroidization of the cementite. Heating above Ac1 should not result in complete austenitization, as the partially undissolved cementite particles provide the nuclei for their continued spheroidal growth. A precisely selected and controlled annealing temperature for spheroidization plays a crucial role in achieving a high spheroidization percentage in a short time.
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