Carbon-defect interaction during recovery and recrystallization of heavily deformed pearlitic steel wires

Abstract Cold-drawn pearlitic steel wires are known to exhibit increasing strength with increasing elongation and are therefore highly interesting for a wide field of engineering applications. When isochronal heat treatment is performed at different temperatures, the tensile strength as well as the electrical resistivity decrease well before microstructural changes are observed. An Arrhenius analysis of both processes yield mean activation energies of about 0.3 eV. This is construed as interaction between carbon atoms and defects in ferrite, mainly vacancies and vacancy clusters. Keywords: pearlitic steelinterstitial-vacancy interactionrecoveryrecrystallizationArrhenius analysis Acknowledgements The authors are thankful to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for financial support via the SFB 602, project B13. Financial support by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung is gratefully acknowledged by Y. Chen and S. Goto. We also thank Dr S. Nishida from Nippon Steel Corporation for providing the steel wire specimens used in this experiment. Technical assistance and sample preparation by A. Lehmberg and V. Radisch are highly appreciated and gratefully acknowledged.