EBSD-data analysis of an additive manufactured maraging 300 steel submitted to different tempering and aging treatments

Abstract

Maraging is a high alloy steel sensitive to the precipitation of intermetallics from a supersaturated solid solution during aging heat treatments. The precipitation phenomenon is well described in the literature, which gave rise to the alloy name regarding a martensite matrix with precipitates formed by aging treatment. Many studies have been performed to characterize this material, usually subjected to many sample preparations for transmission microscopy, which is very laborious, and few EBSD analyses. Therefore, in this work, a large study was conducted using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) to analyze maraging microstructures through band-contrast, kernel average misorientation (KAM), grain orientation spread (GOS), and misorientation distribution. Our results show that solubilization of the additive manufactured maraging steel resulted in a more homogeneous microstructure with new angle grain boundaries. Furthermore, tempering heat treatments relieve martensite strain, increasing band contrast values. Posterior aging presented a low impact on the results of EBSD analysis.