Characterization of austenite microstructure from quenched martensite using conventional metallographic techniques and a crystallographic reconstruction procedure

Abstract

Recently, procedures for recovering austenite fcc crystallographic information from EBSD (Electron Back-Scatter Diffraction) data recorded from martensite or other bcc transformation products have been proposed. Due to the difficulties in revealing prior austenite grain boundaries using available etching techniques, these reconstruction methods appear as promising tools for understanding austenite hot deformation behavior in low carbon steels. In a previous work, the accuracy of an in-house developed reconstruction code was validated using an Fe-30Ni alloy. Validation of this method in low carbon steels is more difficult due to the loss of austenitic orientation information. In addition, it is not known how the results of conventional metallography correlate with those of the reconstruction or which scan parameters or post-processing treatments are necessary for obtaining comparable results. To study this, two martensitic specimens obtained from water quenched recrystallized and deformed austenite were characterized in this study, using both conventional metallographic techniques and the above mentioned reconstruction procedure applied to EBSD scans acquired using different parameter values. The comparability of austenite grain size and morphology was analyzed as a function of the post-processing treatment. The results show that in order to obtain comparable results, it is critical to analyze the coherence of the twins present in the microstructure.