Papers by Author: Leo A.I. Kestens

Abstract: Cube texture ({001}<100>) is a desired final texture in non-oriented electrical steel sheets used as magnetic cores because it contains two easy <100> axes in the sheet plane, which is beneficial to the magnetic properties. However, the cube texture is very difficult to form in non-oriented electrical steels through conventional rolling and annealing. It has been shown that after conventional rolling, the deformed <111>//ND (normal direction) grains provided nucleation sites for the unfavourable <111>//ND texture during recrystallization, leading to a final <111>//ND texture. To eliminate the <111>//ND texture and promote the {001}<100> texture, an uncommon rolling process, i.e. inclined rolling, was adopted in this study. By rotating the hot rolling direction by 60° around the ND, an uncommon initial texture, the rotated Goss ({110}<110>), was intentionally generated. This was intended to change the orientation flow during plastic deformation, and suppress the formation of the conventional <111>//ND texture in the deformed microstructure. Plane-strain compression (rolling) of the rotated Goss grains produced shear bands within these grains due to their large Taylor factor. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) characterization of the shear bands illustrated that, crystallites with the cube orientation were formed within these shear bands. During recrystallization, the shear bands provided preferential nucleation sites, and the cube crystallites preferentially nucleate within the shear bands. These cube crystals can then grow into the deformed matrix, and lead to the formation of a strong cube texture in the final annealed steel sheets.

Abstract: Formability had been important property of metals which is attributed to the texture development during thermomechanical processing particularly during hot rolling and cold rolling. In the present paper, the high strength steels with different carbon and manganese composition have been hot rolled above and below of austenite recrystallization temperature and followed by fast cooling up to different coiling temperature to get hot bands with different texture and two phase microstructure consisting ferrite with pearlite, bainite and martensite. Subsequently, these hot bands were cold rolled with 80 percent under plain strain condition. The microstructure of cold rolled sheets samples were analyzed using scanning electron microscope and showed the cold rolled microstructure with strong pancaked of two phase which was carried from the hot rolling. Cold rolled texture in ferrite pearlite microstructure is completely replaced by new texture components from hot rolled condition without the effect of Tnr. Hot rolled texture was retained in ferrite-bainite and martensite microstructure with the effect of Tnr. Increase in alloy chemistry weakens the texture intensity in ferrite pearlite/bainite microstructure. Whereas increase in alloy chemistry strengthens the texture intensity in ferrite martensite microstructure.

Abstract: No recrystallization of austenite, Tnr, has an important influence on the transformed phase fractions and the final crystallographic texture after hot deformation. This paper investigates the evolution of microstructure and texture components during hot-rolling in two austenitic region based on Tnr along with three different cooling trajectory and coiling in dual-phase steels and high strength low alloys steel. The recrystallization of the austenite, the austenite deformation followed by the austenite-to-ferrite transformation influence the final microstructure and texture in dual phase steels, have been examined by means of optical microscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements. Recrystallized and deformed austenite have clearly different texture components and, due to the specific lattice correspondence relations between the parent austenite phase and its transformation products, the resulting ferrite textures are different as well.

Abstract: The use of finite element simulations has become one of the main tools of the mechanical engineer. The method is applied to the analysis and design of engineering structures, the study of manufacturing processes and even to perform virtual experiments. Traditionally, the constitutive laws chosen for finite element analysis have been as simple as possible, mainly due to the limitation imposed by the available computing power. However, the development of more powerful computers and more efficient methods is opening the possibility of using more elaborated (and, most often, more accurate) material models. In particular, polycrystal models capable of predicting not only the mechanical behaviour of the material, but also of the evolution of properties with increasing strain, are particularly well suited for the simulation of forming processes, for which a precise knowledge of the properties of the resulting product is of paramount importance.The present work studies how the Visco Plastic Self-Consistent model (VPSC) can be used in combination with the implicit finite element package Abaqus/Standard to simulate the behaviour of Ti-6Al-4V sheet, and compares it with the more common (and much simpler) Johnson-Cook model. More specifically, the goal of this study is to determine whether or not, with using similar experimental calibration data, the use of the much more complex polycrystal model, justifies the increased complexity and execution time. Using standard tensile experiments at different strain rates, the parameters of the VPSC and Johnson-Cook models are fitted using a minimization method. Then, both models are used in finite element simulations and the results given by both models are compared.

Abstract: The cold rolling and annealing texture formation has been investigated in electro deposited pure iron which has an extremely sharp and isotropic <111>//ND fiber. Regardless of cold rolling reduction, {111}<112> intensified texture is formed after cold rolling. Similar texture remains after recrystallization in 65% cold rolled material while {111}<110> type texture forms in 80% and 90% cold rolled ones. The recrystallized grains at the stage of 5% recrystallization have {111}<112> orientation in 65% cold rolled sheet, whereas {111}<110> is observed in 80% cold rolled one. From this aspect, it is considered that the nucleation orientation plays an important role in the recrystallization texture formation. In the meanwhile, the growth of the recrystallized nuclei is also supposed to affect the recrystallization texture formation. The nuclei with {111}<112> orientation in lightly cold rolled sheet are easier to consume the deformed matrix than they do in heavily cold rolled sheets because their frequency to encounter a deformed grain with nearly the same orientation is much smaller in lightly cold rolled specimen, which can result in a large mobility for growth. Cross cold rolling makes cold rolling texture rather homogeneous <111>//ND fiber, which gives rise to an almost homogeneous <111>//ND fiber after annealing.

Abstract: In order to increase the sustainability of metals, a more detailed understanding of the corrosion phenomenon is of crucial importance. In current literature, corrosion is often considered as a purely chemical interaction with nearly exclusive dependence on compositional effects, whilst ignoring the microstructural features of the metal surface. In the present work, results are presented which illustrate both the role of grain orientation and grain boundaries in the corrosion process. To evaluate the grain orientation dependent electrochemical behavior, polycrystalline Cu, was brought into contact with a corrosive electrolyte. Subsequently, the attack was evaluated by measuring the surface with both Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD). It was demonstrated that the grain orientation itself did not significantly influence the corrosion kinetics, but, alternatively, that the orientation of the neighboring grains seemed to play a decisive role in the grain dissolution rate. To increase understanding on the role of grain boundaries, a method was developed based on the electrochemical (galvanic) displacement of gold, which is deposited from an aqueous solution on a pure copper substrate. This technique demonstrated its sensitivity to the grain boundary characteristics as far less gold was deposited on special boundaries, such as coincidence site lattice boundaries, as compared to the random high angle grain boundaries.

Abstract: Control of ductile fracture propagation is one of the major concerns for pipeline industry, particularly with the increasing demand of new control rolled steel grades required to maintain integrity at high operational pressures. The objective of this research is to understand which microstructural features govern crack propagation, and to analyse the effect of two of them (average grain size, and volume fraction of pearlite). The main disadvantage during classical Charpy test was to discriminate the crack initiation and propagation energy during fracture of a notched sample. The initiation appears to be caused by the stress state in the neighbouring of Ti-containing precipitates or pearlite particles (no presence of M/A constituents or MnS inclusions was detected in the evaluated grades), propagation-arrest of the crack is assumed to play the main role concerning the control of fracture. Our approach to characterize the fracture resistance is to measure the energy absorbed during the crack propagation stage by means of load-displacement curves obtained via instrumented Charpy test. It was observed that the energy absorbed during crack propagation is not influenced by the average grain size but by the fraction and the morphological (banded-not banded) distribution of second pearlitic phase. This suggests that a different approach to characterize the heterogeneities in grain size clustering might be followed to correlate the energy measured during crack propagation and the morphological features of the steel.

Abstract: Within the techniques and equipments used to simulate industrial thermomechanical processing of High Strength Low Alloy (HSLA) pipeline steels, hot rolling laboratory mill equipped with cooling bed and coiling simulation furnace allows, not only accurate control of strains, temperatures, inter-pass times, and cooling rates but also enough amount of processed material for micro-structural characterisation and mechanical testing. Despite some differences with the industrial rolling, laboratory rolling offers a better simulation of the industrial rolling conditions than other thermo-mechanical simulators in terms of deformation mechanisms and processing constrains. This paper presents the results of simulation of different rolling schedules applied on pipeline grades in order to better understand the influence of the finishing rolling parameters namely: finish rolling temperature (FRT) and cooling routes on the microstructure and mechanical properties. It was observed that FRT and cooling rate have a strong impact on both grain refinement and precipitation behaviour, which leads to significant differences in strength and toughness. Furthermore variations of the above mentioned rolling parameters produce distinct fractions and distributions of austenite transformation products, variations in the final crystallographic texture and trigger diverse strengthening mechanisms (i.e. dislocation hardening). It was found that the accelerated cooling in a combination with a coiling simulation results in formation of microstructures with well developed low angle grain boundaries in comparison to the simulation made with air cooling. As a consequence the strength of the plates after accelerated cooling increases without changes in the Charpy impact toughness. It has been shown that the understanding of the effect of processing parameters on the microstructure of these steels is a key aspect for the optimization of their mechanical properties.

Abstract: The grain size, recrystallization, phase transformation and mechanical properties of a cold-rolled high-strength steel (HSS) are studied after annealing with high (~140°C/s) and ultra-high (~1500°C/s) reheating rate, followed by subsequent water quenching without isothermal soaking. By monitoring the hardness and microstructure, it was shown that the increase of the reheating rate from 140°C/s to 1500°C/s causes grain refinement from 5 µm to 1 µm in diameter and the final ferrite grain size depends significantly on the reheating temperature and reheating rate. It was observed that after an extreme reheating rate of ~1500°C/s the α-γ phase transformation starts before the completion of recrystallization in the recovered matrix. The crystallographic texture of the ultrafast reheated and water-quenched high-strength steel inherits the cold-rolled deformation texture with well pronounced RD and ND texture fibres, even after the α-γ-α′ phase transformations. It was found that the ultrafast reheating results in a very fine non-equilibrium ferrite-martensite structure with an excellent ultimate tensile strength of ~1400 MPa and an acceptable elongation at fracture. The observed data are very promising from industrial application point of view and open up possibilities for further structural refinement and alternative texture control.

Abstract: The austenite recrystallization and grain growth during thermo-mechanical control processing (TMCP) of a pipeline steel grade is described and analysed in terms of precipitation state progress. The influences of finish rolling temperature and cooling rate on the link between microstructure-precipitation evolution and their consequent effect on the mechanical properties were examined. Two stage controlled rolling (roughing and finishing) was carried out on a laboratory rolling mill for a set of completed and interrupted schedules. Subsequent to rolling, two different cooling routes were used (air-cooling and accelerated water cooling (ACC) together with coiling simulation). From the combination of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observations, detailed texture analysis and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy (ICPMS) precipitates quantification, consistent correlations between precipitation state and microstructure at every stage of TMCP can be recognized. The role of grain size and precipitation on final mechanical properties was discussed based on different strengthening mechanisms.