Effect of Vanadium on Phase Transformation, Cold Drawing, and Torsion of High-Carbon Steel

High-carbon steel wire rod is an important raw material for marine high-strength steel wire ropes, and with the progress of ocean engineering, the demand for galvanized steel wire strength is increasing. In this study, 0.06% mass fraction of vanadium element was added to the base steel of 0.88C-0.2Si-0.6Mn-0.2Cr to investigate the effect of the alloy vanadium on the pearlite transformation and the wire drawing torsional performance. The study subjected two wire rods to multiple discontinuous cold drawing after spheroidizing heat treatment, ultimately obtaining cold-drawn steel wire with a diameter of 5.05 mm. The results showed that the addition of vanadium shifted the CCT curve to the lower right, and martensite was produced at a cooling rate of 5 °C/s. Tensile testing results indicated that the addition of the alloy element vanadium improved the tensile strength of the initial wire rod and cold-drawn steel wire. The samples with added vanadium element exhibited good plastic deformation ability of cementite during the drawing deformation process. Heat galvanizing of the cold-drawn steel wire at 450 °C for 30 s and torsion testing revealed that the addition of vanadium caused severe spheroidization of cementite and significant fragmentation of the lamellar cementite in the wire, leading to a decrease in torsional performance.