Abstract ▼ AI-Helper

The austenite phase observed in low carbon HSLA steels is well known to be decomposed to various bainitic microstructures, such as granular bainite, acicular ferrite and bainitic ferrite during continuous cooling process. These bainitic microstructures have been usually identified by using either sc...

The austenite phase observed in low carbon HSLA steels is well known to be decomposed to various bainitic microstructures, such as granular bainite, acicular ferrite and bainitic ferrite during continuous cooling process. These bainitic microstructures have been usually identified by using either scanning electron microscope (SEM) or transmission electron microscope (TEM). However, SEM and TEM images do no exactly coincide, because of the quite different sample preparation method in SEM and TEM observations. These conventional analysis method is, thus, not suitable for characterization of the complex bainitic microstructure. In this study, focused ion beam (FIB) technique was applied to make site-specific TEM specimens and to identify the 3-dimensional grain morphologies of the bainitic microstructure. The morphological feature and grain boundary characteristics of each bainitic microstructure were exactly identified.