Characterization of hot forged P285NH steel by metallurgical investigation and reliability analysis

Abstract

An extensive study was carried out to investigate the effect of cooling rate after hot forging process and normalization step on the hardness, strength and impact toughness and microstructure of P285NH steel. Understanding of the combined effect of cooling rate and normalization on the mechanical and microstructural properties of the steel would help to select conditions required to achieve optimum mechanical properties. The results indicated that the microstructures of all forging and cooling conditions were dominated by ferrite and pearlite phases with different morphologies and grain sizes according to various cooling rates. Conveyor cooling led to a formation of relatively fine acicular ferrite and pearlite grains in comparison to batch cooling which presented coarse polygonal ferrite with pearlite. Based on the data fluctuation of Charpy tests, the normal distribution provided a statistical analysis method for assessing the reliability. Through the statistical analysis of the distribution function, it can be concluded that normalization step is necessary for higher reliability. Both batch cooling and conveyor cooling did not give the required reliability level for safety components due to heterogeneities in the microstructure.