Metal Science and Heat Treatment

Vol. 38, Nos. 9 - 10, 1996

UDC 620.184.4

HEAT T R E A T M E N T FOR EXHIBITING THE D E N D R I T I C S T R U C T U R E

OF CAST H Y P O E U T E C T O I D STEEL
A. A. Zhukov, V. A. ll'inskii, and L. V. Kostyleva
Translated from Metallovedenie i Termicheskaya Obrabotka Metallov, No. 9, pp. 1 0 - 12, September, 1996.
Different methods exist for etching microscopic and macroscopic steel specimens in order to exhibit its primary dendritic structure [1]. We have developed a method for exhibiting this structure in hypoeutectoid steels of the ferrite-pearlite
class in a conventional metallographic analysis by etching a
microscopic polished specimen with nital or picral (solutions
of nitric or picric acid in alcohol). For this purpose the steel is
subjected to a special provoking heat treatment, namely, heating to a temperature in the interval A c 3 - ( A c 3 + 20C), a hold
of about 30min, and slow cooling to 600C at a rate
< 300/h. Further cooling to room temperature can be conducted at any rate, because after the decomposition of the
austenite is completed, the microstructure of the steel does
not undergo substantial changes.
As a result of such heat treatment pearlite segregates in
the form of very small regions between branches of dendrites
of the primary structure of the steel, whereas the branches
themselves remain purely ferritic. Figure la presents the
structure of steel 35L on a surface separating a zone of columnar crystals and a zone of coarse equiaxial grains with
randomly oriented dendrites. The "trunk" of the dendrite (the
first-order axis) is quite discernible, as are the "branches,"
which have some side arms (third-order axes).

Figure l b presents a similar microstructure of the surface

layer of the same casting (a zone with more randomly oriented dendrites). It can be seen that here the dendrites do not
have many branches and the structure consists predominantly
of nonbranched "trunks."
Such a dendrite structure in steel after the described heat
treatment is caused by the following factors. In carbon steels
of type 2 0 L - 3 5 L and in low-alloyed and alloyed steels microsegregation of the components usually results in their accumulation between branches of the dendritic structure.
These components can either increase the activity of the dissolved carbon, or decrease it, which happens more often.
Mn, Cr, V, and other carbide-forming elements and, under some circumstances, A1 and Cu in austenite belong to elements of type i with e~ < 0 at temperatures below 900C
(where eci = d In ? c / d N ~ is the interaction parameter, )'c is the
coefficient of carbon activity, N. is the concentration of the
component in atomic fractions) [2]. Si and Ni belong to elements of typej with e~ > 0. The effect of Ni is weak and ambiguous (it is possible that

gcNi'like ecu, changes sign with de-

crease in the austenite temperature). Therefore, only silicon

remains in groupj. However, in steels with 0 . 0 2 - 0 . 3 5 % C
silicon segregates in thhe "conventional" way, whereas in

Fig. 1. Microstructure of steel 35L at an internal boundary of a zone of columnar crystals of a casting (a) and in the surface layer of the casting (b), Nital
etching, x 100.

374
0026-0673/96/0910-0374515.00 1997 Plenum Publishing Corporatiol

Heat Treatment for Exhibiting the Dendritic Structure of Cast Hypoeutectoid Steel

~1 r

[ r~'r

\Mn

IwV

375

1" , t ,

Fig. 3. Structure of a decarburized dendrite branch of the second order in

heat treated steel 45FL. Picral etching, x 600.

both steels); KeSi= 0.93 (for the steel containing 0.15% C),

. !~

20

40

60

80

S, I.tm

Fig. 2. Structure of amorphous-crystalline steel with 0.5% B in the initial

state: a) electron diffraction pattern, b ) light-field image, c) dark-field image
of a halo region.

steels with a higher carbon content the microsegregation of Si

changes from direct (Fig. 2a) to inverse (Fig. 2b). The spectra
presented in Fig. 2 were obtained by the method of local xray spectral analysis by moving a Cameca MS-46 electron
microprobe across second-order dendritic branches in cast
steel.
Taking into account that the segregation of manganese is
always direct for the concentrations studied, we can infer
from the spectra presented that silicon segregates differently
depending on the carbon concentration in the metal. In lowcarbon steels with 0.15% C (austenite with strongly diluted
carbon) silicon concentrates predominantly in microvolumes
enriched in manganese, i.e., silicon segregates between
branches of primary dendrite crystals. The averaged curves of
the characteristic x-ray radiation of silicon and manganese
are positioned virtually parallel (Fig. 2a). On the other hand,
in steel containing 0.48% C the intensities of the characteristic x-ray radiation of silicon and manganese are counterphase (Fig. 2b), which is a sign of inverse microsegregation
of carbon, which enriches, at this carbon concentration, the
axial zone of primary dendrite crystals.
The parameters of microsegregation of manganese and
silicon in these two steels expressed in terms of the effective
coefficients of distribution are as follows: K~M~= 0.75 (for

and Ksi = 1.11 (for the steel containing 0.48% C).

Consequently, silicon cannot counteract the effect of
manganese and other elements of type i on the difference in
the activities of carbon in different regions of the dendrite
structure of steel (at least at a carbon content exceeding
0.25%).
It turns out that only i-type components accumulate between dendrite branches. Since carbon has a high diffusion
mobility in austenite, this phase is characterized by partial
thermodynamic equilibrium with respect to this component,
i.e., only the chemical potential of carbon tac becomes uni-

form. Sincetac=[ta~z+RTlnNcl+[RTlunyc I
id
~tc

(where Nc is

x
P'c

the carbon concentration in atomic fractions, ~ is the chemical potential of carbon in its standard state, ~ is the chemical
potential in an ideal solution, ta~x is the excess chemical potential), the condition ~c = const corresponds to the condition
In N c + ln~, = const. Consequently, in the regions where 7c is
reduced (due to the presence of an elevated amount of components of type i), the concentration N should be above the
average value. For this reason austenite is inhomogeneous
with respect to carbon even when the latter is characterized
by an equilibrium distribution.
The amount of carbon is reduced along the axes of dendrites; at the temperature Ar 3 ferrite begins to segregate in
these regions. Subsequent portions ferrite are deposited on
crystals of it already formed, and therefore, at Ar t , pearlite
segregates mainly between dendrite branches, making the
dendritic pattern of the metal more pronounced. In steels
characterized by inverse segregation of silicon (for C > 0.35%)
this phenomenon can be observed metallographically due to
polarization of the primary structure with respect to manganese and silicon. For example, in the cross section of a dendrite branch in Fig. 3 we can see darker ferrite enriched in
silicon and depleted of manganese and coated by a thin border of lighter "deposited" ferrite that undergoes a y--~ ct
transformation at a lower temperature.

376

In the case of austenitization at an elevated temperature

the dendritic pattern in the microstructure weakens or is not
observed at all, because the centers of ferrite crystallization in
austenite lose their activity when superheated. Austenite becomes more stable under conditions of supercooling and its
decomposition occurs at a lower temperature, at which ferrite
originates predominantly along grain boundaries rather than
in carbon-depleted zones; no dendritic pattern appears in the
resulting ferrite-pearlite structure.
The cooling rate of austenite after austenitization and
holding affects structure formation just like superheating of
austenite. The higher this rate the more supercooled is
the austenite and the lower the susceptibility of ferrite to segregation in zones with Yc > ~
and, consequently, with

A . A . Zhukov et al.

cles" the steel "polarizes" with respect to manganese and silicon (in the simplest case o f unalloyed steels), i.e., manganese
and carbon concentrated between dendritic branches force
silicon into the dendrite axial zone [3], which becomes more
susceptible to ferrite segregation when austenite is cooled below Ar 3 .
Consequently, only true homogenizing o f east steel with
respect to all its components can eliminate completely the
possibility of formation o f a dendrite pattern in a ferrite-pearlite transformation that occurs in the range A r 3 - A r I. Conversely, selective homogenizing annealing can increase the
capacity of the steel to form such a pattern.
REFERENCES

Nc < N ~ "n.

It is of interest to note that if the steel is heat treated in

order to obtain a uniform femte-pearlite structure (without
traces of the dendritic pattern), it can still acquire such a pattern in a repeated provoking heat treatment by the regime recommended above. The metal can be transferred repeatedly
from one state to the other as long as it retains a dendritic microsegregation nonuniformity with respect to manganese and
other i-type components. Moreover, under such "thermal cy-

1. K. J. Smithies, Metals: A Reference Book [Russian translation],

Metallurgiya, Moscow (1980), pp. 200 - 201.
2. i. 1. Dobrovol'skii and V. A. Kupryashin, "Pearlitization of the
s~ucmre of cast iron under the effect of copper and aluminum,"
in: Problems of the Quality and Effective Use o f Metal in Mechanical Engineering [in Russian], lzd. TPI, Tula (1982), pp. 28 -

34.
3. A. A. Zhukov, "On upward diffusion of components of carbon
and alloyed steel in homogenizing," Metalloved. Term. Obrab.
Met., No. 12, 56 (1976).