Steel is basically used in construction, automobile, buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, appliances, machines and weapons due to its good mechanical as well as metallurgical properties. Heat treatment of steels significantly enhance its mechanical and metallurgical properties due to the formation of various phases depending upon the type of steel used for specific application. In present study, blank of EN353 grade steel having different sizes were used to investigate the effect of heat treatment and microstructural changes. JMat-Pro software was used to predict the continuous cooling transformation behaviour of EN353 steel. Different phases such as bainite, perlite and other carbide inclusion can be observed in the microstructural examination. Pearlitic microstructure developed for the specimen of size 40×40×40 mm heated at 870°C for 2 hrs and then isothermal heating was performed for same specimen at 600°C for 73 min followed by air cooling.
Relevance Statement: Steel is an important material which is frequently used in almost all areas such as structure building, pressure vessels, transportation and many more other applications. Addition of alloying elements in parent steel significantly improve the metallurgical as well as mechanical properties. Steel properties like tensile strength, toughness, ductility, corrosion resistance, wear resistance, hardness, hot hardness, weldability, fatigue etc. significantly improved with the addition of alloying and heat treatment. Heat treatment processes can be used to improve the properties of steel which are frequently used in many manufacturing industries. Different grades of steels which are heat treated under a set of sequence of heating and cooling to change their physical and mechanical properties so that it can fulfil its function under loading condition. With the help of heat treatment process desired microstructure has been achieved which exhibit good mechanical properties of steels.

Section steels produced by welding are essential parts for shipbuilding and offshore plant production. T-type and H-type section steels are produced by handwork for secondary processing, which is a generally difficult and tedious activity. Therefore, automatic welding, with sound welding properties and a high-speed process, is necessary to meet the production demands. Welding conditions can be optimized by controlling various parameters to obtain suitable and highly reliable microstructural properties. In this study, the heat affected zone and weld defects of fillet-welded Angle and T-bar parts were investigated in terms of their microstructural, macrostructural, and mechanical properties to ensure the soundness of AH36 section steel parts joined by continuous welds.

This work deals with the effect of austempering temperature and time on the microstructure and content of retained austenite of a selected cast steel assigned as a material used for frogs in railway crossovers. Bainitic cast steel was austempered at 400°C, 450°C and 500°C for two selected times (0.5 h, 4.0 h) to study the evolution of the microstructure and retained austenite content. The microstructure was characterized by optical microscopy, X-ray diffraction analyses (XRD), and hardness tests. Phase transformations during and after austempering were determined by dilatometric methods.

The increase in isothermal temperature causes an increase in time to start of bainitic transformation from 0.25 to 1.5 s. However, another increase in temperature to 500°C shifts the incubation time to as much as 11 s. The time after which the transformations have ended at individual temperatures is similar and equal to about 300 s (6 min.). The dilatation effects are directly related to the amount of bainite formation. Based on these we can conclude that the temperature effect in the case of cast steel is inversely proportional to the amount of bainite formed. The largest effect can be distinguished in the case of the sample austempered at 400°C and the smallest at 500°C. Summarizing the dilatometric results, we can conclude that an increase in austempering temperature causes an increase in austenite stability. In other words, the chemical composition lowers (shifts to lower temperatures) the range of bainite transformation. It is possible that at higher austempering temperatures we will receive only stable austenite without any transformation. This is indicated by the hatched area in Figure 4b. This means that the heat treatment of cast steel into bainite is limited on both sides by martensitic transformation and the range of stable austenite. The paper attempts to estimate the content of retained austenite with X-ray diffraction.

The paper presents stress-strain characteristics recorded during the four-step compression of axisymmetric samples in the Gleeble thermomechanical simulator. The hot deformability of three steels with Mn concentrations of 3%, 4% and 5% was compared. The analysis of the influence of plastic deformation and Mn content on the microstructure of alloys, and in particular, on a fraction and morphological features of the retained austenite, was performed. The proportion of the retained austenite was determined by the X-ray diffraction method. It was found that the content of Mn in the range from 3% to 5% does not have a significant impact on the high-temperature resistance of the steel during compression tests, but it has a significant influence on the microstructure of the steel and the fraction of retained austenite. The optimal conditions for maximizing the proportion of retained austenite were obtained at the temperature of 400 °C, and it decreased with increasing Mn concentration in the steel. It has been shown that it is related to the redistribution of carbon from the remaining austenite fraction with an increase in the manganese content. The mechanical properties were determined on the basis of hardness measurements.