Effects of Induction Heat Treatment on Austenitic Transformation, Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Pipeline Steels

Abstract

The effects of heating rate, heating temperature and cooling rate on the microstructures and mechanical properties of four pipeline steels for high frequency electric resistance welded pipe have been studied by using a Gleeble-3500 thermo-mechanical simulator. The results show that the heating rates have an effect on austenizing phase transformation temperature (Ac1 and Ac3). It shows that there is a linear relationship between heating rate and austennizing temperature (Ac1 and Ac3) in the range of tested heating rate. With the heating temperature increasing, the strength property goes up, on the contrary, the strength begins to go down when the heating temperature exceeds 900 °C, then a lowest strength point appears on 925 °C in the testing scope. As the further increase of the heating temperature, the strength goes up again. Moreover, the cooling rate has a great effect on the microstructure and the mechanical properties. With the decrease of cooling rate, the strength decrease significantly, meanwhile, the microstructure becomes coarse, even the banded structure can be found. As the conclusion, the optimum heating temperature is 950 °C, and cooling rate is from 8.5 to 13 °C/s.