AISI 1020 steel is considered to be one of the most applicable structural steels, in particular in the cold drawn form. Heating of this grade of steel prior to AC1 must have been applied to spheroidize the lamellar cementite, and consequently enhances the cold formability character of the steel. Si3N4 nanoinoculation of this grade of steel has been used in this study, where it is added to the molten steel, in order to avoid the high cost long term heat treatment process prior to cold deformation process. Optical microscopy and SEM have been used to evaluate the morphology of cementite after nanoinoculation process with Si3N4. Tensile properties of nanoinoculated steels have been investigated. Finally, wear adhesive resistance of investigated samples has been evaluated. The obtained results showed a great enhancement in the mechanical properties, strength, ductility and adhesive wear resistance, as a result of the nucleation of cementite into a new spheroidal phase and grain refinement by Si3N4 inoculation and allow usage of AISI 1020 steels inoculated by nanoinoculant Si3N4 in further technological applications.

Medium-carbon, silicon-rich steels are commonly suggested to obtain a very fine bainitic microstructure at a low temperature slightly above Ms. Thereby, the resulted microstructure consists of slender bainitic-ferritic plates interwoven with retained austenite. The advanced strength and ductility package of this steel is much dependent on the fineness of bainitic ferrite, as well as the retained austenite phase. In this article, the aluminum to silicon ratio, and the isothermal transformation temperature have been adopted to obtain ultra-high strength high carbon steel. Optical and SEM investigation of the produced steels have been performed. XRD has been used to track the retained austenite development as a result of the change in the chemical composition of developed steels and heat treatment process. Mechanical properties in terms of hardness and microhardness of obtained phases and structure were investigated. Results show that the increment of aluminum to silicon ratio has a great effect in promoting the bainitic transformation, in tandem with improving the stability and the fineness of retained austenite. Such an advanced structure leads to enhancement in the whole mechanical properties of the high carbon steel.

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