Mechanism of intragranular ferrite formation in heat-affected zone of titanium killed steel

A lot of work is carried out concerning to acicular ferrite formation in the weld metal of high strength and low-alloy steel. Those results are suggesting that oxides that contain titanium elements provides nucleation site of intragranular ferrite, referred as acicular ferrite. Thus, when intragranular ferrite is expected to form in heat-affected zone, oxide containing titanium element should be formed in the steel. However, normal steel is deoxidized by using aluminum element (Al-killed steel) with little oxygen content. It means almost oxygen is deoxidized with aluminum elements. In the present work, in order to form the acicular ferrite in the heat affected zone, with the same concept in the case of weld metal, the steel deoxidized with titanium element (titanium killed-steel) is prepared and the acicular ferrite formation is observed in detail by using laser-conforcal microscopy technique. The confocal technique makes it possible that the morphological change along the phase transformation from austenite to ferrite is in-situ tracked. Thus, the inclusion that stimulated the ferrite nucleation could be directly selected from the observed images, in the HAZ of the Ti-killed steel. The chemical composition of the selected inclusion is analyzed and the nucleation potential is discussed by changing the nucleation site with boron element. The potency for the ferrite nucleation is summarized and the existence of effective and ineffective manganese sulfide for nucleation is made clear.