Influence of severe plastic deformation on the precipitation hardening of a FeSiTi steel

TL;DR

This study investigates how severe plastic deformation influences precipitation hardening in FeSiTi steel, revealing microstructural effects on precipitation kinetics and mechanical strength enhancement.

Contribution

It demonstrates the combined effects of grain refinement and precipitate volume on strengthening, highlighting the interaction between deformation and precipitation in FeSiTi alloy.

Findings

Refinement affects precipitation kinetics and distribution.

Heterogeneous nucleation on dislocations and boundaries.

Combined strengthening less than sum of individual effects.

Abstract

The combined strengthening effects of grain refinement and high precipitated volume fraction (~6at.%) on the mechanical properties of FeSiTi alloy subjected to SPD processing prior to aging treatment were investigated by atom probe tomography and scanning transmission electron microscopy. It was shown that the refinement of the microstructure affects the precipitation kinetics and the spatial distribution of the secondary hardening intermetallic phase, which was observed to nucleate heterogeneously on dislocations and sub-grain boundaries. It was revealed that alloys successively subjected to these two strengthening mechanisms exhibit a lower increase in mechanical strength than a simple estimation based on the summation of the two individual strengthening mechanisms.