Unveiling relationship between hierarchical microstructure and a more balanced strength–toughness of PH13-8Mo stainless steel
摘要
Different from previous attention on the austenization temperature or dwelling time of PH13-8Mo stainless steels, the effect of the cooling rate on the hierarchical microstructure and mechanical properties was revealed. For all of water, oil, air and furnace cooling, there is almost-complete martensite with the favorable hardenability. The increase in cooling rate mainly increases the density of dislocation and residual strain in the as-solution annealed matrix. After aging treatment, the cooling rate dominates the ratio of high-angle grain boundaries (HAGBs) instead of the size of martensite blocks. The ratio of HAGBs continuously increases with the decreased cooling rate, while the width of blocks maintains 2.40–2.49 μm. Meanwhile, more reversed austenite distributes at the martensite sub-grain boundaries. By comparison, the increased rate of water cooling contributes to a favorable precipitation of NiAl with fine size and dispersive distribution caused by more accumulated internal defects of vacancies and dislocations. With the decrease of cooling rate, NiAl precipitates exhibits a similar diameter of ~7 nm while a larger inter-particle distance of ~22 nm. In the case of low cooling rate (oil, air and furnace), the stable precipitation strengthening effect contributes to a high yield strength of ~1.3 GPa and ultimate tensile strength of ~1.4 GPa. The high-ratio HAGBs, reversed austenite and NiAl precipitates with larger-interparticle distance synergistically improve the impact toughness (V-notched Charpy impact energy of 100–110 J).