Precipitation and Evolution Behavior of Carbide During Heat Treatments of GCr15 Bearing Steel

Abstract

The evolution behavior of carbides in GCr15 bearing steels after spheroidization annealing, austenitization quenching and low temperature tempering was investigated by the method of quantitative metallography. Numerical simulations on the dissolution kinetics of carbide size and composition during austenitization were performed by ThermoCalc software. The results indicate that the carbide particles formed after spheroidization annealing have a multimodal distribution whilst their size distribution changes to have a single peak after austenitization and tempering, and Cr content increases slightly after austenitization; the carbide particles appear to have larger size with higher Cr content; C rich austenite is formed during austenitization through solid solution by carbides after spheroidization annealing, and then high carbon martensite is formed after quenching and results in the high hardness; Cr atoms can partition from austenite to carbide during the dissolution of carbide, lead to the increasing Cr content of rest carbide particles; the numerical simulations indicate that the carbide particles with the diameter of 200nm cannot completely be dissolved during austenitization even if its Cr content is close to the nominal Cr content of steel, and the undissolved ones may affect the precipitation of carbides during the subsequent tempering.

Keywords

• carbide
• heat treatment
• dissolution
• thermodynamics
• kinetic calculation