Magnetic Hysteresis Loop as a Tool for the Evaluation of Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of DP Steels

DP steel of 1.3-mm thickness full hard sheet was heat treated at different temperatures in the range of 700-850 °C with 25 °C step for 15 min soaking followed by water quenching. The variation of the soaking temperatures leads to variation of volume fraction of martensite which was measured by image analysis software in optical microscopy. Mechanical properties of the samples were evaluated using micro Vicker’s hardness test and tensile test machine. Magnetic properties of the samples were measured by MagStar to correlate with the microstructure and mechanical properties of the samples. It was observed that the coercivity of the samples increased linearly with the increase in volume fraction of martensite and mechanical properties. Hence monitoring coercivity would help non-destructive evaluation of mechanical properties of the DP steels. Additionally, it would also helpful for the non-destructive evaluation of variation in heat treatment conditions since coercivity also found to increase linearly with the increase in soaking temperature.