Influence of microstructural changes due to tempering at 923 K and 1,023 K on magnetic Barkhausen noise behavior in normalized 2.25Cr-1Mo ferritic steel

Magnetic Barkhausen noise analysis has been used to characterize the microstructural changes in normalized and tempered 2.25 Cr-1Mo steel. It is observed that tempering at 923 K shows a single peak behavior up to 20 h and tempering at 1,023 K shows a two peak behavior. This has been explained on the basis of the two stage process of irreversible domain wall movement during magnetization, associated with two major obstacles to domain wall movement: namely lath/grain boundaries and secondary phase precipitates. At lower fields, existing reverse domain walls at lath/grain boundaries overcome the resistance offered by the grain boundaries and move to a distance before they are pined by the precipitates. Then, at higher field, they overcome these precipitates. These two processes occur over a range of critical field strengths with some mean values. If these two mean values are close to each other, then a single peak in the rms voltage of the magnetic Barkhausen noise, with the associated changes in its shape, is observed. On the other hand, if the mean values of the critical fields for these two barriers are widely separated, then a two peak behavior is the clear possibility. The effect of the microstructural changesmore » due to tempering for different durations at 923 K and 1,023 K in 2.25 Cr-1Mo ferritic steel on magnetic Barkhausen noise is explained based on these two stage processes. The influence of high dislocation density in bainitic structure, dissociation of bainite, and precipitation of different carbides such as Fe{sub 3}C, Mo{sub 2}C, Cr{sub 7}Ce{sub 3}, M{sub 23}C{sub 6}, etc., on magnetic Barkhausen noise behavior has been analyzed in this study.« less