Application of dual-anneal diffusion multiples to the effective study of phase diagrams and phase transformations in the Fe–Cr–Ni system

Abstract

A dual-anneal diffusion multiple (DADM) approach is developed for effective determination of intermediate-temperature phase diagrams that are critical to the establishment of reliable thermodynamic databases. A large amount of phase equilibrium data was obtained from DADMs to construct the Fe–Cr–Ni isothermal sections at 1200, 900, 800 and 700°C. The DADM approach is also a systematic and effective way to study phase precipitation from wide ranges of compositions, thus generating rich atlases of microstructures induced by various transformations. The results from this study indicate that the body-centered cubic to sigma phase transformation in the Fe–Cr–Ni system took place initially through a massive transformation mechanism.