Papers by Author: Shigekazu Morito

Abstract: The reverse transformation of austenite from pearlite was observed in-situ by using a sophisticated EBSD system. Quantitative information on the nucleation sites and orientation selection of the austenite was obtained. Initially, the nucleation sites were restricted to high-angle grain boundary (HAB) and all the austenite orientations were selected by Kurdjumov-Sachs (K-S) orientation relationship. Latterly, the constraints were relaxed as new nucleation sites were involved. The γ growth was preferentially into the pearlite grains without K-S relation. Nucleation and growth at HAB edge may contribute to γ coarse grains, whereas nucleation at pre-existing γ boundary is important to grain refinement of γ structure.

Abstract: The Japanese sword is produced from a special kind of steel called tamahagane, using a forge-fold operation repeated several times. The purpose of this study is to clarify the development of microstructures with successive forge-fold operations using tamahagane. Specimens under several stages of sword making have been investigated with optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and electron probe micro analysis methods. Microstructures have been found to be a combination of ferrite and pearlite with a lot of nonmetallic inclusions. The ferrite bands become finer and among other inclusions Fe2SiO4 takes a spherical shape with increasing recurrence of forge-fold operations.

Abstract: This study investigated the substructure evolution in lenticular martensite. The substructure of lenticular martensite changes from fine transformation twins in the midrib and twinned region to a high density of dislocations in the untwinned region during growth. On the basis of careful observation of the morphology and substructure of midrib and examination of the stress-induced growth behavior of thin plate martensite, we concluded that the midrib in lenticular martensite is thin plate martensite itself. Tangled and curved dislocations appeared near the martensite-austenite boundary of the untwinned region in Fe-33Ni and in the entire untwinned region in Fe-31Ni, because the martensite inherited the accommodation dislocations in the surrounding austenite. The difference of Ms temperature causes the difference in the substructure between Fe-33Ni and Fe-31Ni. The higher Ms temperature of Fe-31Ni induces the plastic deformation of the surrounding austenite at an earlier stage of transformation, resulting in the appearance of tangled and curved dislocations in the entire untwinned region.

Abstract: The development of blocks and subblocks in the lath martensite was observed with SEM/EBSD and TEM/Kikuchi diffraction patterns analyses. Morphology of lath martensite formed below Ms temperature was observed using step quenching method in 18 mass% Ni maraging steel. The development of lath martensite structure can be described as follow; lath groups with single K-S variant start to form at the austenite grain boundary. Next, other sub-blocks appear adjacent to the lath groups formed first and these lath groups form macroscopic blocks observed in optical microscopy. The morphologies of the lath martensite in Fe -23 mass% Ni alloy cooled at different cooling rates after austenitization were also observed. The packet size and block thickness decreases with increasing cooling rate, although the sub-block thickness do not change. A packet locally contains small packets with different relationship of close packed planes, and the amount of small packets increases with increasing the cooling rate.