A cellular automaton investigation of the transformation from austenite to ferrite during continuous cooling

A cellular automaton model has been employed to investigate the transformation from austenite to ferrite in low carbon steels during continuous cooling. An important aspect of this approach is the implementation of incorporating local concentration changes into a nucleation or growth function, which is utilized by the automaton in a probabilistic fashion. The modeling gives a visual insight into the effect of cooling conditions on this transformation. The final nucleation number, the number of ferrite grains per austenite grain, ferrite grain size and the kinetics of ferrite formation are obtained as a function of the cooling rate or the undercooling temperature. (C) 2003 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.