New insights into the austenitization process of low-alloyed hypereutectoid steels: Nucleation analysis of strain-induced austenite formation

Austenite formation, which originated from a fined-grained ferrite plus carbide microstructure, was observed during tensile testing at 973 K (60 K below Ae1, the equilibrium austenite–pearlite transformation temperature). Scanning electron microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction and atom probe tomography results reveal the mechanism of austenitic transformation below Ae1. The initial fine-grained microstructure, in combination with the warm deformation process, determines the occurrence of strain-induced austenite formation below Ae1. The initial fine-grained microstructure essentially contains a higher dislocation density to facilitate the formation of Cottrell atmospheres and a larger area fraction of ferrite/carbide interfaces which serve as austenite nucleation sites. The warm deformation promotes the Ostwald ripening process and the increase in dislocation density, and hence promotes the accumulation of local high carbon concentrations in the form of Cottrell atmospheres to reach a sufficiently high thermodynamic driving force for austenite nucleation. The critical carbon concentration required for the nucleation of austenite was calculated using classical nucleation theory, which correlated well with the experimental observations.