Effect of inter-critical annealing parameters on ferrite recrystallization and austenite formation in DP 590 steel

This research investigates the effect of inter-critical annealing parameters on ferrite recrystallization and austenite formation during processing of a dual phase microstructure from a cold rolled low carbon steel. The main effort was to determine optimum annealing parameters for producing a desired ferrite-martensite dual phase microstructure in the steel for improved strength–ductility combination. A 57% cold rolled steel sheet was subjected to inter-critical annealing under different temperature–time conditions. Annealing temperatures were determined using Thermo-Calc. After annealing experiments, the resulting microstructures and corresponding hardness values were evaluated to determine ferrite recrystallization and austenite fraction under different conditions. The activation energy for ferrite recrystallization was 235.6 kJ/mol using standard Johnson–Mehl–Avrami–Kolmogorov analysis. Experiments showed that inter-critical annealing parameters affect the phenomenon of ferrite recrystallization and austenite formation. It was observed that both the rate of ferrite recrystallization and austenite formation increase with an increase in annealing temperature. Finally, steel was annealed under conditions similar to industrial processing in an annealing simulator with the selected annealing parameters to obtain improved strength–percentage elongation combinations. The steel under these conditions showed significant improvements in strength–ductility combination (610 MPa–26%; 680 MPa–15%) with an ideal yield strength to an ultimate tensile strength ratio of 0.5.