Development of a High-Strength Low-Carbon Steel with Reasonable Ductility through Thermal Cycling

In this research work, cost-effective structural material synthesis routes have been adopted in the form of thermal cycling designed and applied on a low-cost material (AISI 1010 steel). The main synthesis route consists of two-step thermal cycling (designed with respect to iron–carbon phase diagram) combining short-duration holding in upper critical and intercritical temperature regimes and different cooling conditions (forced air cooling and ice-brine quenching). Accordingly, the adopted hierarchical design approach (from nanoscale onwards) with a combination of hard and soft phases (to attain an adequate balance between mutually exclusive strength and ductility properties) results in origin of a novel microstructure. The microstructure consists of dislocation-enriched martensite regions (possessing plate and lath morphologies in 1:4 ratio) containing nanosized cementite particles and α-ferrite regions containing submicroscopic cementite particles. As a consequence, an excellent combination of strength (UTS = 905 MPa) and ductility (%Elongation = 17) is achieved in the synthesized material.