The microstructure and precipitate of the two kinds of medium-carbon vanadium microalloyed steels whose nitrogen contents were 0.0035% and 0.012% respectively, were studied by image analysis and transmission electron microscope (TEM). The results show there are the large amount of 10~20nm dispersion distribution irregular flake VC precipitates within the ferrite, the part of clustered fibrous VC precipitates with the diameter of 4~13nm that grow toward to ferrite intracrystalline along the grain boundary with some angle in the local area, and only a very small amount of 20 ~ 50nm spherical particles V (C, N) in the low-nitrogen steel. However, in the high-nitrogen steel, the precipitates are divided into two stages: the first stage is the part of 30~80nm spherical particles V(C, N) which precipitation in austenite, the second stage is flakiness VC which precipitation in ferrite during the following γ → α phase transformation and cooling process. Compared with the low-nitrogen steel, the number of precipitates in decreased significantly and the size increased obviously in the high-nitrogen steel. The substantial increase of nitrogen content leads to the rapid increase of driving force that V (C, N) precipitation in austenite. A lot of V (C, N) that precipitation before phase transformation results in the significant increase of ferrite nucleation rate, which leads to the microstructure of high-nitrogen steel fined obviously.
