ALLOYING ELEMENT SEGREGATION AND ITS EFFECT ON THE AUSTENITE TO FERRITE TRANSFORMATION

Abstract

Controlled decarburization experiments were carried out on ternary and quaternary iron alloys. The planar ferrite interfaces formed during decarburization were subsequently investigated using atom probe tomography (APT) to measure interfacial segregation. The segregation results for the Fe-Si-C, Fe-Mn-C, and Fe-Mo-C were used to improve the three-jump-model developed Zurob et al. These three systems were accurately modelled using interfacial binding energy values in agreement with the atom probe tomography results. Qualitative explanations for the modelling results of Sun et al. on the Fe-Mn-Mo-C system and Qiu et al. on the Fe-Mn-Si-C system have also been provided using the results from the atom probe tomography investigation.