Gear steel is a ferritic steel. In the rolling process, the ideal structure is ferrite + pearlite, and bainite or martensite is not expected. However, due to the high alloy content, the hardenability is good, and the bainite or martensite structure is very likely to be generated upon cooling after rolling. In this paper, phase transformation rules during continuous cooling of 20CrMnTi with and without deformation were studied to guide the avoidance of the appearance of bainite or martensite in steel. A combined method of dilatometry and metallography was adopted in the experiments, and the dilatometer DIL805A and thermo-simulation Gleeble3500 were used. Both dynamic and static continuous cooling transformation (CCT) diagrams were drawn by using the software Origin. The causes of those changes in starting temperature, finishing temperature, starting time and transformation duration in ferrite-pearlite phase transformation were analyzed, and the change in Vickers hardness of samples with different cooling rate was discussed. The results indicate that with different cooling rate, there are three phase transformation zones: ferrite-pearlite, bainite and martensite. Deformation of austenite accelerates the occurrence of transformation obviously and moves CCT curve to left and up direction. When the cooling rate is lower than 1 °C/s, the phases in samples are mainly ferrite and pearlite, which is the ideal microstructure of experimental steel. As the cooling rate increases, starting temperature of ferrite transformation in steel decreases, starting time reduces, transformation duration gradually decreases, and the Vickers hardness of samples increases. Under the cooling rate of 0.5 °C/s, ferrite transformation in deformed sample starts at 751.67 °C, ferrite-pearlite phase transformation lasts 167.9 s, and Vickers hardness of sample is 183.4 HV.
Effect of hot rolling history and cooling rate on the phase transformation of plain carbon steel
