Strengthening Mechanisms in Steels

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Strengthening mechanisms in steels: In the previous section development of microalloyed steels, their effect on the properties of steel and development of ultra high strength steels has been discussed. One aim of this project is to strengthen steel. So, it is important to discuss the strengthening mechanisms in steels, how each mechanism works, factors which control them and their impact on mechanical properties. These include: 1. Grain refinement: Grain size strengthening effect was first observed in aluminium steels. They give higher yield strength and toughness due to the presence much finer ferrite. [Gladman]. To understand the fact of grain size strengthening we need to know a. How yielding process occurs? b. How this process is affected by grain size? Dislocation cell operates within a grain and dislocations are generated, they move and pile up to the grain boundary. This pile up causes a stress on the adjacent grain and when this stress reaches a critical value a new dislocation source is generated in the adjacent grain. This process is repeated from grain to grain and thus yielding occurs. Grain size determines the distance how far the dislocations need to move to form dislocation pile up and thus the number dislocations involved. If the grain size is large the pile up contain large number of dislocations and will cause higher stress concentration in the neighboring grains. Shear stress at the tip of dislocation pile up is proportional to the number of dislocations involved in the pile up. So, the coarser the grain size the easier it will be to propagate the yielding process [Honeycomb bhadeshia]. Not only grain refinement strengthens the steels but it also lowers the impact transition temperature. Thus grain refinement increases toughness. It is interesting to note that flow stress, work hardening rate, fracture stress and total strain at

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