There has been a growing interest in the peritectic due to increasing productivity, quality, and alloy development. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has traditionally been used to study steel solidification but suffers significant limitations when measuring the solidus and peritectic. This work covers a new thermal analysis system that can characterize the peritectic reaction. Heats of AISI/SAE 1030 and 4130 steel were poured to provide some benchmarking of this new technique. The peritectic was detected and the reaction temperature measured. Measurements agree reasonably well with reference information. A review of the literature and thermodynamic calculations did find some disagreement on the exact temperatures for the peritectic and solidus. Some of this difference appears to be related to the experimental techniques employed. It was determined that the system developed accurately indicates these reaction temperatures. The system provides a unique method for examining steel solidification that can be employed on the melt deck.

In this paper, the authors investigated the size distribution of titanium oxide (TiO2), titanium nitride (TiN) and titanium carbide (TiC) inclusions in a titanium deoxidized 4130 steel and compared it with the 4130 base alloy composition inclusions. TiN and TiC inclusions are of particular interest due to their role as heterogeneous nuclei for various phase reactions in steels. Two types of samples were prepared, a polished sample and a filtered sample. Electrolytic dissolution was employed to make the filter paper samples. The size range of titanium inclusions was found to be more than that of the non-metallic inclusions from 4130 base alloy heat. Titanium inclusions from the filter and polished samples were round in shape. TiC and TiN inclusions were not found in the electrolytic extraction samples. Inclusions and their chemistries were analyzed using scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive spectrometer. The inclusion size range was larger for the titanium deoxidized samples than the base alloy. However, in both steels the majority of inclusions had a size smaller than 10 μm.