Evolution of Precipitation in the new Hybrid Steel

Research Project, 2018 – 2019

The newly developed Hybrid Steel relies on combined strengthening by carbides and intermetallic precipitates. The steel has high strength, good corrosion resistance and excellent fatigue properties. The purpose of the proposed project is to improve the understanding of the precipitation hardening process and the parallel evolution of carbides and intermetallic precipitates during heat treatment. The idea is to perform combined in-situ small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS), to follow the size distribution of the precipitates while at the same time have information about the crystal structure of the precipitates. The experiments will be performed at a series of temperatures for times up to a few hours. The first choice of beamline is the Swedish Materials Science Beamline at Petra III. The project is a collaboration between Ovako Sweden AB and Chalmers University of Technology, building on previous ex-situ studies using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atom probe tomography (APT) and lab-scale SAXS.