Materials Letters 291 (2021) 129573

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Materials Letters
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mlblue

Modeling the quantitative effect of alloying elements on the Ms

temperature of high carbon steel by artificial neural networks
Xiao-Song Wang 1, P.L. Narayana 1, A.K. Maurya, Hong-In Kim, Bo-Young Hur, N.S. Reddy ⇑
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 52828, South Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Chemical composition affects the properties and the martensite start (Ms) temperature of steels. This
Received 21 September 2020 study predicts the Ms temperature of high carbon steel via artificial neural networks. Meanwhile, it
Received in revised form 17 November 2020 enables us to estimate the quantitative effect of alloying elements on the Ms temperature on a sizeable
Accepted 12 February 2021
selectable scale, which is the first time to release such results exactly. Compared to the previous formulas,
Available online 18 February 2021
this one is simple, visual, with high accuracy.
Ó 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
High carbon steel
Alloying element
Ms temperature
Quantitative effect
ANN

1. Introduction in Table S1 in Supplementary data. From most of which, a general

High carbon steels are the steel series with 0.6–1.0 wt% carbon
and 0.30–0.90 wt% manganese. These steels are easily heat-
treatable due to their high carbon content but have poor formabil-
ity, machinability, and weldability. Their applications include
springs, high-strength wires, welding tools, hand tools, and
agricultural tillage tools.
Ms temperature is one of the vital parameters in steel-making,
at which the steel begins to change its crystal structure from
austenite into martensite. The dominant affecting factor to Ms tem-
perature is the chemical composition or alloying element of steel,
although other influences, such as austenitizing state, grain size,
plastic deformation, and magnetic field, play specific roles as well
[1,2]. Since the minor influences and inadequate relative data, the
factors mentioned above are scarce in the consideration list for
most studies from the beginning [3–7]. Significant progress had
been made for estimating or predicting the Ms temperature in
steels since 1944, initiated by Payson and Savage [3]. From then
on, scientists release formulas with some modification on their
terms or coefficients. The applicable formulas in the whole or par-
tial range for high carbon steels are collected [4–16] and tabulated
formula of linear regression can be extracted,
X
y¼hþ xixi ð1Þ
i
where y is the predictive Ms temperature of target steel. h is an
offset parameter, which means a constant obtained for the Ms
temperature of pure iron. xi is the weight coefficient (quantitative
effect) of each alloying element. xi is the content of alloying element
i. Except for the standard type, there are some formulas in particular
forms or containing transformed terms [4,11,16]. As researchers
claimed, these are deduced to modify the estimated values.
Regardless of the formulas, the disadvantage is that nearly each
has a statement for its use range or restricted kind of alloying
elements. It can’t be in good agreement with the experimental
result if any condition goes beyond the established scope. Thus,
conveniently predicting high carbon steels’ Ms temperature
becomes one of the issues that metallurgists face in operation; that
is one of this study’s aims. We also discuss the quantitative effect
of alloying elements on the high carbon steels’ temperature, which
is significant for alloy design.
2. Methodology

ANN is one of the machine learning tools whose importance

⇑ Corresponding author. isn’t fully appreciated until a paper about the back-propagation
E-mail address: nsreddy@gnu.ac.kr (N.S. Reddy). algorithm by Rumelhart et al. in 1986 [17]. Using this method,
1
These authors contributed equally. one can study any non-linear systems [18]. A neural network

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2021.129573
0167-577X/Ó 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Xiao-Song Wang, P.L. Narayana, A.K. Maurya et al. Materials Letters 291 (2021) 129573

Fig. 1. The trial results of different parameters on the training, testing and total datasets:

Table 1
High carbon steel sets for the predictive result comparisons.

Data No. C Mn Si Cr Ni Mo V Co Al W Cu N Experimental Ms temperature (K)

35 0.62 0.82 2.01 0.07 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 523
36 0.84 0.62 0.23 0.04 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 494
39 0.61 0.59 0.24 0.94 0.16 0.33 0 0 0 0 0 0 533
45 0.865 0.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 488
47 0.635 0.88 0.28 0 0 0.25 0 0 0 0 0 0 518
49 0.6 0.88 0.23 0.8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 528
51 0.915 0.75 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 489
55 0.6 0.72 0.2 0.17 0.2 0.03 0 0 0 0 0.12 0 543

contains several nodes grouped in three layers - input, hidden, and
output; wherein the input and output layer have their exact items
by the case. However, the configuration of other parameters (i.e.,
the number of the hidden layer(s), the included nodes of each
hidden layer, learning rate, momentum term, and iteration) should
be determined by trial and error. In general, building an ANN has
the following procedures:
1. Targeting: Make exact the input and output layer items, namely
what you have and what you want. In this study, the input layer
refers to alloying elements’ content, and the output layer corre-
sponds to the Ms temperature.
2. Collecting: Collection and construction of the database. Herein,
fifty-five sets of high carbon steel data are found (Table S2 in
Supplementary data), along with their chemical composition
and Ms temperature.
3. Grouping: The dataset is divided into training and testing. The
proportion of the two is generally between 6:4 and 8:2. The
more training data are used, the higher partial accuracy the
model has, but concurrently, the more limited its application
scope is. We adopted 6:4 here. Therefore, steel sets #1~#33
are for training, and the others (#34~#55) are for testing.
4. Training: Do trials through the ANN using training data by
changing the parameters one by one, and then find out the most
reliable result by comparing errors of the testing data. The trial
and error results for different parameters on the training, test-
ing, and total data are shown in Fig. 1.
5. Building: Based on the training results, the optimal structure of
the ANN is considered to be 12-2-1/0.5/0.6/11000, that is, three
layers with respective nodes 12-2-1, learning rate 0.5, momen-
tum term 0.6, and 11,000 iterations, at which the resulting error
of the training and testing part is 6.87, and 17.25 degree,

2
Xiao-Song Wang, P.L. Narayana, A.K. Maurya et al. Materials Letters 291 (2021) 129573

Fig. 2. The comparison results of the predictive Ms temperature of high carbon steel sets.

Fig. 3. Step-wise prediction of Ms temperature and the quantitative effect of alloying elements of steel set #55.

3
Xiao-Song Wang, P.L. Narayana, A.K. Maurya et al.
respectively, and the mean square error (M.S.E.) is as low as
5.15  10-4 degree2. Construct the best-fit ANN model via the
parameters of the least deviation (average error percentage
0.0606% on the testing data).
6. Applying: Calculating the Ms temperature by inputting reason-
able contents of the alloying elements in the trained ANN model
for estimation.
A virtual program of alloy addition system is constructed for the
ANN model using JAVA. The relationship between alloying con-
tents and Ms temperature can be presented in a visual expression
through the model (Fig. S1 in Supplementary result).
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Prediction comparison of the Ms temperature
Eight steel sets randomly selected from the untrained database
(testing part) are ready to compare the formulas and the ANN’s
prediction, listed in Table 1. Fig. 2 shows the predictive Ms temper-
ature values, along with the linear fitting of the ANN data. The
figure indicates that the ANN model’s predictions are much more
accurate than those of the previous formulas. For the model, the
Pearson correlation coefficient (Pearson’s r) is up to 0.94999; thus,
the predictions are in good agreement with actual values.
3.2. Quantitative effect of alloying elements
The relationship between composition and Ms temperature can
be quantitatively extracted using the ANN model. Typically, the
tendencies or rough values of a few alloying elements’ effects on
the Ms temperature are probably known [12]. Through the well-
trained model, the impact of alloying elements on Ms temperature
can be understood relatively quickly and efficiently. It is also the
first time for the accurate calculation of the topic in this field.
For instance, consider the high carbon steel #55 as an example.
After adding the alloying elements virtually one by one, the steel’s
Ms temperature will vary step by step from that of pure iron,
shown in Fig. 3. The Ms temperature for pure iron is 668.7 K, which
is computed by setting the alloying elements at zero in the model.
The Ms temperature for pure iron was deduced from the high
carbon steels database. The quantitative effect of each alloying
element on the Ms temperature can be known after a simple com-
putation, as shown in the figure. The alloying elements Cu and Si
show a positive effect on the Ms temperature, whereas the C, Mn,
Mo, Cr, and Ni have a negative impact (in order of strength, respec-
tively) [2]. These values of quantitative effect are exact in the
range, neither universal ones for all steels. The absolute and per-
centage errors of final predictive Ms temperature value upon the
experimental one are only 3.5 degrees and 0.64%, respectively.
4. Conclusion
In the present study, we developed an user-friendly standalone
efficient ANN model for predicting the Ms temperature of high
carbon steels compared to the existing models. The model is not
limited to predicting the Ms temperature but also helps to realize
the specific calculation of the quantitative effect of alloying
elements on Ms temperature. The proposed method will become
an easy and efficient way for alloy design and guide actual exper-
iments or manufacturers.
Materials Letters 291 (2021) 129573
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Xiao-Song Wang: Formal analysis, Writing - original draft,
Writing - review & editing. P.L. Narayana: Investigation, Data
curation. A.K. Maurya: Investigation. Hong-In Kim: Investigation.
Bo-Young Hur: Funding acquisition. N.S. Reddy: Conceptualiza-
tion, Methodology, Software, Writing - review & editing,
Supervision.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
N.S. Reddy Acknowledges YSJ-TV for the inspiration and Y.K.K.
for helping in Model G.U.I. Development. The authors would like
to appreciate the Engineering Research Institute’s support,
Gyeongsang National University.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2021.129573.
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