Deformation induced precipitation in an industrial Ti microalloyed dual phase steel

This study evaluated the influence of plastic deformation during hot strip rolling in the size of TiN precipitates in an industrial Ti microalloyed dual phase steel. TiN is usually used for pinning austenitic grain boundaries during recrystallization and its efficiency depends on factors such as size of the precipitates and Ti precipitated fraction. During the slab reheating process, there occurs a partial dissolution of TiN precipitates that subsequently reprecipitates during the hot rolling process. However, this reprecipitation preferentially takes place at crystalline defects which act as nucleation sites. These sites increase with the amount of applied plastic deformation, resulting in smaller precipitates, due to the partial dissolution of larger particles or due to reprecipitation in the nucleation sites. Results indicate a reduction of about 28 % in the average size of the precipitates for samples extracted from hot bands (with deformation) and, therefore, a significant reduction in austenitic grain size, when compared with samples extracted from slabs (with no deformation).