• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.164-169
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• 2007

Hydrogen induced cracking (HIC) was studied phenomenologically and the effect of microstructure on HIC was discussed for the steels having two different levels of nonmetallic inclusions. Steels having different microstructures were produced by thermomechanically controlled processes (TMCP) from two different heats which had the different level of nonmetallic inclusions. Ferrite/pearlite (F/P), ferrite/acicular ferrite (F/AF), ferrite/bainite (F/B) were three representative microstructures for all tested steels. For the steels with higher level of inclusions, permissible inclusion level for HIC not to develop was different according to steelmicrostructure. On the contrary, HIC occurred also at the martensite/austenite (M/A) constituents regardless of steel microstructure when they accumulated to a certain degree. It was proved that M/A constituents were easily embrittled by hydrogen atoms. Steels having F/AF is resistant to HIC at a given actual service condition since they covers a wide range of diffusible hydrogen content without developing HIC.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.327-337
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• 1999

A series of Ni-Cr-Mo alloy steels were austenitized, quenched to martensite, and tempered at various temperature and time conditions. Tensile testing was conducted at room temperature with cylindrical specimens, and hardness was measured using Rockwell hardness tester. In the tempering stage I, high strain hardening and yield strength accounted for the high ultimate strength and hardness. In the tempering stage II, strengths and hardness linearly decreased with increasing tempering temperature. Specimens tempered in the temperin stage III showed incipient discontinuous yielding and tensile strengths only slightly higher than yield strengths. Ductilities decreased slightly in specimens tempered in the tempered martensite embrittlement range, and severely decreased in specimens tempered for 10 hours at $500^{\circ}C$ in the temper embrittlement range. Specimens tempered at $600^{\circ}C$ for 10 hours showed recrystallized microstructures, a number of fine dimples, and increased strain hardening, probably due to the precipitation of alloy carbides. The simple formulae for the mechanical properties of these steels were suggested as a function of carbon content and Hollomon-Jaffe tempering parameter.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.172-175
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• 2006

Effects of deformation at austenite non-recrystallization region and cooling rate on the microstructure and mechanical properties of low carbon (0.06 wt. %) high strength low alloy steels have been investigated. Average grain size decreased and polygonal ferrite transformation promoted with increasing deformation amount due to increase of ferrite nucleation site. As cooling rate increased, the major microstructure changed from polygonal ferrite to acicular ferrite and the fraction of M/A constituents gradually increased. Discontinuous yielding occurred in highly deformed specimen due to the formation of polygonal ferrite. However, small grain size of highly deformed specimen caused lower ductile-to-brittle transition temperature than slightly deformed specimen.

• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2006.09b
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• pp.952-952
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• 2006

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.46 no.10
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• pp.609-616
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• 2008

Conventional bake-hardenable(BH) steels should be annealed at higher temperatures because of the addition of Ti or/and Nb which forms carbides and raises recrystallization start temperature. In this study, the development of new BH steels without Ti or Nb addition has been reviewed. The new BH steels have nearly same mechanical properties as the conventional BH steels even though it is annealed at lower temperature. The steels also show smaller deviation of the mechanical properties than that of the conventional BH steels because of the conarol of solute carbon content during steel making processes. The deviation of mechanical properties in conventional BH steels is directly dependent on the deviation of solute carbon which is greatly influenced by the amount of the carbide formers in conventional BH steels. Less alloy addition in the newly developed BH steels gives economical benefits. By taking the advantage of sulfur and/or nitrogen which scarenge in Interstitial-Free or conventional BH steels, fine manganese sulfides or nano size copper sulfides were designed to precipitate, and result in refined ferrite grains. Aluminum nitrides used as a precipitation hardening element in the developed steels were also and resull in fine and well dispersed. As a result, the developed steels with less production cost and reduced deviation of mechanical properties are under commercial production. Note that the developed BH steels are registered as a brand name of MAFE(R) and/or MAF-E(R).

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.46-51
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• 2010

Recently, automotive industry is attempting to replace steels for automotive parts with light-weight alloys such as aluminum alloy, because of the growing environmental regulations governing exhaust gas and the engine effectiveness of a vehicle. The low cycle fatigue (LCF) and high cycle fatigue (HCF) properties as well as the microstructure and tensile property were investigated on the low pressure cast A356 aluminum alloy wheel, which was followed by T6 heat treatment. The cast microstructure of the alloy influenced significantly on the low cycle and high cycle fatigue behaviors. The rim part of cast aluminum alloy wheel showed higher low cycle and high cycle fatigue strength compared with the spoke part, which should be caused by higher cooling rate of rim part. The spoke part of the wheel showed coarser dendrite arm spacing (DAS) and wide eutectic zone in the microstructure, which resulted in the partial brittle fracture and lower fatigue life time.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.78-86
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• 2004

Effects of the annealing parameters on the formation of ferrites transformed at low temperatures were studied in cold-rolled ultra low carbon steels with niobium and/or chromium. Niobium and chromium were found to be effective in the formation of the low temperature transformation ferrites. The low temperature transformation ferrites more easily formed when both higher annealing temperature and longer annealing time, allowing substitutional alloying elements to distribute between phases, are in combination with faster cooling rate. It was found from EBSD study that the additions of niobium or chromium resulted in the increase in the numbers of high angle grain boundaries and the decrease in those of the low angle grain boundaries in the microstructures. Both granular bainitic ferrite and bainitic ferrite were characterized by the not clearly etched grain boundaries in light microscopy because of the low angle grain boundaries.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.523-532
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• 2010

Co-application of organic coating and cathodic protection has not provided enough durability to low-alloyed steels inseawater ballast tank (SBT) environments. An attempt has made to study the effect of alloy elements (Al, Cr, Cu, Mo, Ni, Si, W) on general and localized corrosion resistance of steels as basic research to develop new low-allowed steels resistive to corrosion in SBT environments. For this study, we measured the corrosion rate by the weigh loss method after periodic immersion in synthetic seawater at $60^{\circ}C$, evaluated the localized corrosion resistance by an immersion test in concentrated chloride solution with the critical pH depending on the alloy element (Fe, Cr, Al, Ni), determined the permeability of chloride ion across the rust layer by measuring the membrane potential, and finally, we analyzed the rust layer by EPMA mapping and compared the result with the E-pH diagram calculated in the study. The immersion test of up to 55 days in the synthetic seawater showed that chromium, aluminium, and nickel are beneficial but the other elements are detrimental to corrosion resistance. Among the beneficial elements, chromium and aluminium effectively decreased the corrosion rate of the steels during the initial immersion, while nickel effectively decreased the corrosion rate in a longer than 30-day immersion. The low corrosion rate of Cr- or Al-alloyed steel in the initial period was due to the formation of $Cr_2FeO_4$ or $Al_2FeO_4$, respectively -the predicted oxide in the E-pH diagram- which is known as a more protective oxide than $Fe_3O_4$. The increased corrosion rate of Cr-alloyed steels with alonger than 30-day exposure was due to low localized corrosion resistance, which is explained bythe effect of the alloying element on a critical pH. In the meantime, the low corrosion rate of Ni-alloyed steel with a longer than 30-day exposure wasdue to an Ni enriched layer containing $Fe_2NiO_4$, the predicted oxide in the E-pH diagram. Finally, the measurement of the membrane potential depending on the alloying element showed that a lower permeability of chloride ion does not always result in higher corrosion resistance in seawater.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.456-459
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• 2005

Continuous cooling transformation behaviors were studied fur low carbon HSLA steels containing three different level $(1\~3\;wt\%)$ of Ni addition. Thermo-mechanical processing (TMP) simulations to construct continuous cooling (CCT) diagram were conducted by using Gleeble system. As cooling rate increased, pearlite, granular bainite, acicular ferrite, bainitic ferrite and lath martensite were transformed from deformed austenite. Fully bainitic microstructure were developed at all cooling rate condition in high Ni containing steel due to hardenability increasing effects of Ni. Ni also influenced the transformation kinetics. At the slowest cooling rate of $0.3^{\circ}C/s$, transformation delayed with decreasing Ni contents because of the diffusion of substitutional alloy elements. However, cooling rate slightly increased to $1^{\circ}C/s$, transformation kinetics accelerated with decreasing Ni contents because nucleation of bainite was sluggish due to hardening of residual austenite.

• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2006.09b
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• pp.933-934
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• 2006

The present study examines the sintering behaviour and effect of manganese addition both mechanically-blended and mechanically alloyed on Cr-Mo low alloyed steels to enhance the mechanical properties. Mn sublimation during sintering provides some specific phenomena which facilitate the sintering of alloying elements with high oxygen affinity. First step is the optimization of milling time to attain a master alloy with 50% of Mn which is diluted in Fe-1.5Cr-0.2Mo water atomized prealloyed powder by normal mixing. These mixtures are pressed to a green density of $7.1g/cm^3$ and sintered at $1120^{\circ}C$ in $90N_2-10H_2$ atmosphere.