SynopsisThe effect of Nb content in HSLA steels on hot ductility was investigated under various thermal cycles. The increase of Nb content was found to deteriorate hot ductility in all the thermal cycles investigated. The change in hot ductility with temperature gave rise to only one trough in the temperature region from 700 to 900 °C, which covered the lower temperature region of the austenite (I), and the Y-a region (II). The strain concentration in the ferrite primarily reduced hot ductility in the region II, and the increase of Nb content reduced hot ductility remarkably in region I, where grain boundary precipitates such as Nb(CN) primarily controlled hot ductility. The latter fact was confirmed through the studies of fractography and reversibility of hot ductility behavior. The improvement of hot ductility in the Nb-bearing steels was shown to be attained by adoption of the thermal cycle corresponding to hot charging process of the ingot or the slab, and also by the decrease of N content or the addition of the small amount of Ti. Relation between hot ductility and hot deformation mechanism, such as dynamic recrystallization or grain boundary sliding, is discussed.

Historical progress of Thermo-Mechanical Processing (TMP) in steels during a last half century is briefly reviewed in the first part of this paper. On-line accelerated cooling process in a wide plate mill was developed by a Japanese steel mill in the end of 1970's, and its equipment was installed into major steel plate mills in Japan and Europe in 1980's. The combination of controlled rolling and accelerated cooling called as TMCP provided a powerful means for microstructural control of hot rolled steel plates. Subsequently, direct quenching (DQ)-tempering process was industrialized, where direct quenching after finish-rolling was performed at the highest cooling rate available in the accelerated cooling equipment. Since then, various new steel plates have been developed by intensive use of TMCP and direct quenching process particularly in Japan. In the latter part of this paper, newly developed steel plates by use of TMCP or DQ process during last two decades were summarized based on classification of line pipe steel, weldable HSLA steel plates used for shipbuilding, offshore construction, building, bridge or penstock, and austenitic stainless steel plate. Various strengthening mechanisms such as grain refinement, precipitation hardening or strengthening due to transformed microstructures have been utilized in development of numerous TMCP and DQ steel plates.

No abstract

The effect of hot rolling condition and chemistry of steels on the onset temperature of r-a transformation after hot rolling was investigated using a thermal analyzer developed for the measurement of Ar3 temperature after hot rolling. The changes of Ar3 temperature and austenitic microstructure in connection with reheating temperature, rolling temperature and reduction rate were investigated in a Si-Mn and a Nb-bearing steels. The results were analyzed based on the changes of the effective interfacial area per unit volume (Sv) that included both of the recrystallized and unrecrystallized grain boundaries and deformation band as nucleation sites for ferrite. Although the Sv value increased with the refinement of recrystallized r grain or the increase of rolling reduction below recrystallization temperature of austenite, the latter resulted in a much greater change of Ar3 temperature in the Nb steel. This was considered to be due to a reduced amount of dissolved Nb atoms around the grain boundary or deformation band through the strain induced precipitation of Nb(CN). The effect of chemistry and plate thickness on the Ar3 temperature after controlled rolling was studied in a large number of steels with different chemistry, and the relation between the Ar3 and chemistry was quantitatively established based on the multiple regression analysis.

Alkali hydrothermal synthesis of zeolite A using blast furnace (BF) slag was investigated. The preliminary experiment was conducted in use of synthetic slag consisting of SiO 2 , Al 2 O 3 , and CaO powders, and it was made clear that the most optimum slag compositions to synthesize zeolite A were the molar ratio of Si to Al (Si/Al) of 1 and reduction of CaO content down to 15 mass%, and that hydrothermal treating conditions were the temperature range from 328 to 358 K, NaOH solution of 1 M (ϭmol/L) and the ratio of the volume of NaOH solution to total mass of slag (V sol /W slag ) of 15 (mL/g). It was also found that synthetic slag with such a higher content of CaO as 40 % resulted in formation of tobermorite and hydrogarnet. In the experiment using BF slag, zeolite A could be successfully synthesized by optimizing both conditions of the compositions of raw material powders and hydrothermal treatment as noted above, where optimization of the compositions of raw material powders such as Si or Al content were performed by the suitable amount of addition of SiO 2 powder or NaAlO 2 powder as a source of Si and Al. The ball milling type reaction vessel containing numerous small SiC balls which was first adopted in this hydrothermal treating study was confirmed to be very effective for acceleration of synthetic reaction rate, shortening markedly the time period needed for fully synthesis of zeolite A. Temperature dependence of heat capacity of zeolite A powder synthesized in use of BF slag was measured after absorption of vapor at the ambient temperature, showing endothermic behavior with the peak at the temperature of around 473 K.