scholarly journals Microstructure and Local Mechanical Properties of the Heat-Affected Zone of a Resistance Spot Welded Medium-Mn Steel

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3362
Author(s):  
Manfred Stadler ◽  
Ronald Schnitzer ◽  
Martin Gruber ◽  
Katharina Steineder ◽  
Christina Hofer

The properties of the heat-affected zone (HAZ) are reported to have a great influence on the mechanical performance of resistance spot welded advanced high strength steels. Therefore, in the present work, the HAZ of a medium-Mn steel is characterized regarding its microstructure and its mechanical properties depending on the distance to the fusion zone (FZ). In order to obtain the local mechanical properties of the HAZ, samples were heat-treated in a joule-heating thermal simulator using different peak temperatures to physically simulate the microstructure of the HAZ. By comparing the microstructure and the hardness of these heat-treated samples and the HAZ, the local peak temperatures within the HAZ could be determined. Subsequently, tensile tests were conducted, and the austenite phase fraction was measured magnetically on the physically simulated HAZ samples in order to determine the local mechanical properties of the HAZ. As verified by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, peak temperatures above 1200 °C led to a uniform distribution of manganese, resulting in a predominantly martensitic microstructure with high strength and low total elongation after quenching. Below 1100 °C, the diffusion of manganese is restricted, and considerable fractions of austenite remain stable. The austenite fraction increases almost linearly with decreasing peak temperature, which leads to an increase of the total elongation and to a slight decrease in the strength, depending on the distance to the FZ. Temperatures below 700 °C exhibit hardly any effect on the initial microstructure and mechanical properties.

Materials ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 3793
Author(s):  
Xuemin Chi ◽  
Shuo Han

As a new type of third-generation automotive steel with high strength and plasticity, medium-Mn steel (MMnS) has been widely used in automotive industries for its excellent properties. In recent years, servo stamping technology for high-strength metal forming is a hot topic due to its good performance in forming under complex processing conditions, and servo parameters determine the forming quality. In this paper, experiments considering tensile speed and position where speed changes (PSC) were carried out on MMnS to investigate the influences of tensile parameters on mechanical properties including strength and total elongation (TE). The results show that PSC does not significantly impact total elongation. Initial tensile speed (ITS) and final tensile speed (FTS) significantly impact the total elongation. The interaction between all tensile parameters can impact total elongation. Two artificial neural networks, back propagation neural network (BPNN) and radial basis function neural network (RBFNN), were used to establish analytical models. The results of supplemental experiment and residual analysis were conducted to verify the accuracy of the analytical models. The BPNN has a better performance and the analytical model shows that with the increase of PSC, it has a slight impact on the changes of optimal and minimum total elongation, but the combinations of tensile parameters to obtain total elongations higher than 40% change significantly.


Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 1021
Author(s):  
Yunzhao Li ◽  
Huaping Tang ◽  
Ruilin Lai

Resistance spot welded 1.2 mm (t)-thick 1400 MPa martensitic steel (MS1400) samples are fabricated and their microstructure, mechanical properties are investigated thoroughly. The mechanical performance and failure modes exhibit a strong dependence on weld-nugget size. The pull-out failure mode for MS1400 steel resistance spot welds does not follow the conventional weld-nugget size recommendation criteria of 4t0.5. Significant softening was observed due to dual phase microstructure of ferrite and martensite in the inter-critical heat affected zone (HAZ) and tempered martensite (TM) structure in sub-critical HAZ. However, the upper-critical HAZ exhibits obvious higher hardness than the nugget zone (NZ). In addition, the mechanical properties show that the cross-tension strength (CTS) is about one quarter of the tension-shear strength (TSS) of MS1400 weld joints, whilst the absorbed energy of cross-tension and tension-shear are almost identical.


2014 ◽  
Vol 794-796 ◽  
pp. 431-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bardelcik ◽  
Alexandre Bouhier ◽  
Michael J. Worswick

To overcome the low room temperature formability of AA7075-T6 aluminum sheet, without sacrificing the high strength properties of this alloy, a hat section beam member was formed and quenched within a cold die immediately after a 20 minute solutionizing treatment. Natural aging for 24 hours followed the forming process which was then followed by various heat treatments that included a typical precipitation hardening (PH) and industrial paint bake (PB) temperature-time treatment. Tensile specimens were extracted from the beams to evaluate their mechanical properties. When compared to the as-received AA7075-T6 mechanical properties, the beams heat treated with the PH, PHPB and PB treatment resulted in a 5%, 13% and 20% reduction in ultimate tensile strength respectively. A similar trend was shown for the yield strength measurements. There was little effect of the heat treatments on the total elongation, with the PH condition showing a slight improvement. A backing plate was riveted to the beams and a quasi-static 3 point bend test was conducted to evaluate the crush performance. The peak load for the PH, PHPB and PB beams was 9.2, 8.5 and 7.3 kN respectively, but the calculated energy-displacement (or energy absorption) curves were similar for the PH and PHPB parts due to a more ductile fracture behavior for the PHPB material condition.


2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (10) ◽  
pp. 2266-2275
Author(s):  
Yang Cao ◽  
Lin Zhao ◽  
Yun Peng ◽  
Liang Song ◽  
Minlin Zhong ◽  
...  

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 2233
Author(s):  
Shaobin Bai ◽  
Wentao Xiao ◽  
Weiqiang Niu ◽  
Dazhao Li ◽  
Wei Liang

Steel designs with superior mechanical properties have been urgently needed in automotive industries to achieve energy conservation, increase safety, and decrease weight. In this study, the aging process is employed to enhance the yield strength (YS) by tailoring the distribution of V-rich precipitates and to improve ductility by producing high volume fractions of recrystallized ferrite in cold-rolled medium-Mn steel. A reliable method to acquire ultra-high strength (1.0–1.5 GPa), together with ductility (>40%), is proposed via utilizing non-recrystallized austenite and recrystallized ferrite. Similarly to conventional medium-Mn steels, the TRIP effect, along with the mild TWIP effect, is responsible for the main deformation mechanisms during tensile testing. However, the coupled influence of precipitation strengthening, grain refinement strengthening, and dislocation strengthening contributes to an increase in YS. The studied steel, aged at 650 °C for 5 h, demonstrates a YS of 1078 MPa, ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of 1438 MPa, and tensile elongation (TE) of 30%. The studied steel aged at 650 °C for 10 h shows a UTS of 1306 MPa and TE of 42%, resulting in the best product in terms of of UTS and TE, at 55 GPa·%. Such a value surpasses that of the previously reported medium-Mn steels containing equal mass fractions of various microalloying elements.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 1259-1269
Author(s):  
Bingge Zhao ◽  
Yuanfang Wang ◽  
Kai Ding ◽  
Guanzhi Wu ◽  
Tao Wei ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 385 ◽  
pp. 308-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Torganchuk ◽  
Dmitri A. Molodov ◽  
Andrey Belyakov ◽  
Rustam Kaibyshev

The effect of cold working followed by annealing on the development of ultrafine grained microstructure and mechanical properties of an Fe-12%Mn-0.6%C-1.5%Al medium-manganese steel was studied. The steel was cold rolled with intermediate annealings and then annealed at 873 K or 923 K for 30 min. The yield strength and total elongation of the Fe-12Mn-0.6C-1.5Al steel after cold rolling were 1200 MPa and 14%, respectively. The heat treatments resulted in the formation of two phase (austenite-ferrite) ultrafine grained microstructures with average grain sizes of 0.9 to 1.2 μm, depending on the annealing temperature. The annealed ultrafine grained steel samples exhibit the yield strength in the range of 800-950 MPa, the ultimate tensile strength in the range of 1150-1200 MPa, and total elongation of 12% to 19%.


2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 1330-1333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youn-Suk Jong ◽  
Young-Kook Lee ◽  
Dong-Cheol Kim ◽  
Moon-Jin Kang ◽  
In-Sung Hwang ◽  
...  

Metals ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1090 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunquan Liu ◽  
Qichun Peng ◽  
Zhengliang Xue ◽  
Chengwei Yang

In the context of obtaining an excellent elongation and tensile-strength combination in the third generation of advanced high strength steel, we emphasized the practical significance of adjusting the retained austenite fraction and stability in medium-Mn steel to obtain better mechanical properties. A novel cyclic quenching and austenite reverse transformation (CQ-ART) was used to obtain a large retained austenite content in Fe-0.25C-3.98Mn-1.22Al-0.20Si-0.19Mo-0.03Nb (wt.%) Nb–Mo micro-alloyed medium-Mn steel. The results show that after twice cyclic quenching and ART, the alloy exhibited optimum comprehensive properties, characterized by an ultimate tensile strength of 838 MPa, a total elongation of 90.8%, a product of strength and elongation of 76.1 GPa%, and the volume fraction of austenite of approximately 62 vol.%. The stability of retained austenite was significantly improved with the increasing of the number of cyclic quenching. Moreover, the effects of CQ-ART on the microstructure evolution, mechanical properties, C/Mn partitioning behavior, and austenite stability were investigated. Further, the strengthening effect of microalloying elements Nb–Mo was also discussed.


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