Technology of Construction Materials

Prof. Daniele Ugues

Politecnico di Torino,
Department of Applied Science and Technology

Lesson n. 7: From Basic to Quality Structural Steel

Aim of the lesson
• Characteristics of basic structural steels

• Evolution from basic to quality steel

• Concept of Ductile To Brittle (DTB) transition temperature

• Strategies to reduce DTB for steels

 Structural steels
• General purpose structural steels accounts for the 80% of the total steel making
industry.
• Typically they are used directly after the hot rolling or after a heat treatment
performed directly during the manufacturing process
• Profiles and shape steels for metallic constructions and steels for the concrete
reinforcement belong to this material category.
• These steels typically do not have tight chemical requirements. On the other hand
yield strength or specific quality (depending on the usage) must be guaranteed
• Nowadays, structural steels have two sub-categories i.e. basic steels and quality
steels
 Basic and quality steels
• Basic steels
• They are produced with simple/traditional routes without alloying elements
• Used after the hot-rolling process or in rare case after a normalizing treatment.
• the only compositional requirement is related to the S and P content which must be
lower than 0.050% and possibly much lower

• Quality steels
• Small amount of alloying element (generally less than 0.01%) such as Al, Nb, N, V, Ti
are added  promotion of precipitation hardening mechanisms and grain refinement
• they are manufactured with newer routes (controlled hot rolling or on-line heat
treatments)
• yield and ultimate tensile strength, toughness and weldability are much higher with
respect to basic steels.
 Historical transition from basic to quality steels
• In the past structural steels typically belong to the class of basic steels and
typically have yield strength of 250 MPa.
• One of the reasons which led to the development of quality steel grades was
the need to increase mechanical properties: today, quality steels easily
reach 450 Mpa of YS.
• Additionally, quality steels need no further surface machining (with a
consequent costs reduction)
• They can be used instead of special structural steels which need expensive
heat treatments

• Apart from YS and UTS other properties can be of paramount importance…

 Drivers to move from basic to quality steels
• Within the II World War, mechanical design was based on the ultimate tensile
strength, and little attention was payed to yield strength, toughness and
weldability. Riveting was the most common way to join steel panels together.
• The average carbon content of steels at that time was around 0.3wt%, which
limited the weldability of these materials. Such a high carbon content also shifted
the Ductile To Brittle (DTB) transition temperature well above 0 °C (DTB is a
measurement of the sensitivity of steel to low temperature)
• By the passing of time, riveting was gradually substituted by welding thus the
carbon content had to be consequently lowered. To compensate the loss in
mechanical properties as a first action Mn was added to such steels.
• All these actions do not provide to steel an optimal mix of strength, toughness
and impact resistance
Liberty ships failure, split in half after receiving an impact in the cold water of north Atlantic
Cracks in welded structures can propagate unimpeded for large distances, thus leading to
catastrophic failure.
However, when structures are riveted, a crack ceases to propagate once it reaches the edge of a
steel sheet.
 Towards quality steels… (I)
• The Liberty ship failures have drawn the attention onto
the ductile-brittle transition (DTB) and many efforts
were spent to lower it below 0°C.

Impact test (Charpy)

 Towards quality steels… (II)
• To decrease the DTB, C content was further decreased and Aluminum was added to promote the
grain refinement.
• Finer grains structure in fact promotes higher mechanical properties and at the same time
lowers the DTB transition temperature.
• By introducing these novel operations, yield strength was increased up to 300 MPa and DTB
transition temperature was lowered at ca. 0°C

Further enhancements were obtained

exploiting the precipitation hardening
strengthening by adding minor amounts of
Nb, Ti or V (microalloyed steels).
 Towards quality steels… (III)
• Despite this, toughness was still too low, because at that age the grain size control during hot
rolling was still unknown.
• In principle grain refinement can be obtained via a recrystallization annealing treatment but this is
quite expensive
• The controlled hot rolling technique was therefore developed especially to fully exploit the
features of micro-alloyed steels.
• This thermo-mechanical treatment obviously allows to reduce the steel plate sections by hot
rolling, but in this specific process the temperature is strictly controlled during the various steps
of the process. In this way the correct grain size is directly obtained in a single step process.
 Controlled Hot rolling technique
The first step of the hot rolling process is
Temperature [°C]

performed at high temperature, above A3, so that

First rolling all material is fully austenitic. At this point, the
plate is still 5 times thicker than final section
needed. During this step Austenite can recrystallize
in a fine structure during the holding steps.
Holding
Then temperature is lowered to 900°C, and a
Second rolling second step of rolling is performed within the
temperature range of 900-750 °C. Hot rolling is
(+fine carbides
performed in several steps until the correct
precipitation) thickness is obtained.
Within this same temperature range also fine
carbides precipitate and impede the coarsening of
austenitic grains.

During the cooling stage, Austenite transforms into

Time [s] ferrite. Since the former austenitic grain is already
very small, also ferrite grain nucleates in a very
These steels have a yield strength higher than 450 MPa, fine manner.
and DTB transition temperature below -80 °C.
Traditional rolling process versus Controlled
Rolling

Hot Rolling

Normal hot rolling and normalizing Controlled hot rolling processing

processing sequence sequence
 Another possibility to reduce ductile
to brittle transition temperature

FCC materials have BCC materials have 48

12 slip systems slip systems

Slip planes are planes of atoms in the crystalline structure along which the material can
slip: dislocations can move, thus allowing plastic deformation.
None of the 48 slip systems of BCC is a closed packed planes (atoms density along such
systems is low thus limiting the dislocation motion). On the contrary, all the 12 slip
systems of the FCC are closed packed planes.
This means that plastic deformation via dislocations motion is much easier in FCC
systems rather than in BCC ones. This is true even at very low temperature when
thermal energy is limited.
 The use of austenitic stainless steels for low temperature applications
• An efficient way to limit the impact of DTB is to use FCC materials, i.e. austenitic
stainless steels, instead of BCC ones. On the contrary structural steels are ferritic steels.

However,
the cost of the structure will definitively increase
(material cost shifts from few Euro/kg to more than
15 Euro/kg)

Impact resistance [J]

the mechanical strength of austenitic stainless steels
is definitively low with respect to structural steels:
no strengthening via martensitic transformation,
strengthening is possible only via work hardening,
grain refining, solid solution and only in some cases
via precipitation hardening.

Temperature [°C]