Recrystallization, Precipitation Behaviors, and Refinement of Austenite Grains in High Mn, High Nb Steel

Through a series of experiments conducted on three kinds of high Mn steels with different Nb content, including stress relaxation tests, physical metallurgical modeling, and observation of prior austenite grains and precipitates, the effect of Nb on recrystallization and precipitation behaviors were investigated. The results indicate the existence of a novel deformation temperature range for grain refinement resulting from complete static recrystallization (SRX) in high Mn, high Nb steel, whereas slow SRX kinetics can be accelerated by a finer initial grain size. In this deformation temperature range, the effect of precipitation is too weak to prohibit SRX nucleation efficiently, but solute drag is still large enough to slow down growth rate. As a consequence, shorter incubation and homogeneous recrystallized nucleation can be realized at relative low temperature, and the coarsening rate of grains is much slower because of the high solute drag effect in the rolling of low C high Mn, high Nb line pipe steel.