A Control‐Cooled Hot‐Forged Medium Carbon V‐Microalloyed Steel: Strengthening Breakdown in Conjunction with the Synchrotron X‐Ray Absorption Spectroscopy

Abstract

This article represents a few practical objectives for industrial research on a microalloyed medium carbon ferritic‐pearlitic 38MnSiVS6 steel, fabricated by hot forging followed by controlled cooling. The first is to determine the achievable yield strength (YS) in different process windows using an industrial‐scale sample. Second, it quantifies the contribution of different strengthening mechanisms, where less attention has been paid in the literature for the studied steel group. The process–microstructure–mechanical properties relationship is characterized by means of image analysis, synchrotron X‐Ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), hardness, impact, and tensile tests. XAS is the key in this study to evaluate the fraction precipitated of the microalloying element to correlate its effectiveness in strengthening. It can be concluded that vanadium precipitates between 60 and 73 at‐%, which contributes to the additional YS of 221–349 MPa within the studied process window. The smaller precipitated fraction of 7–12% at a higher cooling rate shows a strengthening fraction above 100 MPa of improvement. The refined precipitates enable a lower overall precipitation amount down to 60%, which can be a good hint in case alloying optimization is required.