Microstructural Banding-Formation & Effect on Properties

No one likes surprises in manufacturing, and this is especially true during heat treatment. What we
don’t often consider is the condition of the incoming raw material. In this regard, the result of alloy
segregation and banding after heat treatment can cause considerable angst between the heat
treater and their customer.

Many people believe steels are classified only by their chemistry. For design purposes, it is generally
assumed that steels are homogenous. Unfortunately, they are not.

Macrochemical analysis surveys of ingots cast from a single ladle of molten steel reveal differences
of composition. These surveys also show that composition varies from the bottom to the top and
from the center to the outside of each ingot. A batch of forgings made from a single ingot will
therefore exhibit part-to-part composition variability, as well as variations within each part.
However, such variations do not generally depart from the intended steel specification range. What
is of more concern is the variability that occurs on a microscale over very small distances. This
variability is referred to as microsegregation or banding.

Formation and development of Microstructural banding:

Microsegregation or Microstructural banding of steels arises during the solidification process. When
steel is cast into the ingot mould, the first material to solidify is that adjacent to the cooler mould
walls. If there is no special preparation applied to the mould walls to slow the cooling rate, then the
first metal to solidify, called a "chilled" surface layer, is a thin layer of small equiaxed crystals with
the same composition as the liquid metal. At the inner surface of the chilled layer, the situation is
energetically favourable for crystals above a critical size to continue growing inward. The growth is
cellular initially but soon gives way to dendritic growth parallel to the thermal gradient. The
dendrites grow long (see the columnar zone, Fig. 1 and 2), but such growth slows as the thermal
gradient becomes flatter. Meanwhile, in the liquid ahead of the thermal gradient when the
temperature has fallen sufficiently, nucleation takes place at many sites (i.e., on suitable substrates,
such as non-metallic inclusions), followed by uniform dendritic growth at each site until solidification
terminates when neighbouring grains impinge. These grains constitute the equiaxed grained zone at
the center of the ingot.

Fig-1: Schematic Illustrating of

Microsegregation in a large steel ingot Fig-2: Section through a conventionally cast ingot

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The solidification process occurs as dendrites advance into fresh liquid regions. As the interface
advances, some solutes are incorporated in the dendrite whereas others are rejected into the liquid.
Such a partition effect will cause the concentration gradients leading to micro-chemical bands.

An alloy of composition Xo is presented in the hypothetical constitution diagram of Fig-3. When the
temperature of the molten metal falls to the liquidus at X 1, solid material of composition A 1
nucleates within the melt. With further cooling, the composition of any growing crystal changes
from A1 at its center through to A4 on its surface. Meanwhile, the composition of the surrounding
liquid changes from X1 to X4, which is the last of the liquid to solidify. Therefore, there is a distinct
difference in impurity or solute content between the first and the last materials to solidify. This
difference is what is called ''microsegregation.''

Fig-3: Schematic constitutional diagram of how compositional variations develop during

solidification

As the columnar grains grow forward together from the surface (Fig. 2), they push the more impure
liquid ahead of them toward the central zone. Therefore, the central zone contains more of the
impure material than the columnar zone. When the central zone has almost solidified, the least pure
liquid, including the lower melting point nonmetallic inclusions, has nowhere to go except to the
interfaces between the impinging dendrites. Consequently, on final solidification, the central zone is
the more heavily macro- and microsegregated. From the source referred at 2, the maximum
microsegregation in 1 and 9 ton ingots occurs at three-fourths of the distance from the surface to
the center of the ingot.

Steels solidify in the manner described above, although the proportion of columnar growth to
equiaxed growth varies depending on the length and steepness of the thermal gradient. Thus, the
mode of solidification is essentially columnar for continuously cast steels and equiaxed for very large
conventionally cast ingots.

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The Effect of Mechanical and Thermal Treatments (forging, rolling and normalising:)

Case-hardening steels are generally supplied in the wrought condition, that is hot rolled or forged to
some convenient shape and size. During these hot-working processes, the microsegregated areas
are given a directionality related to the amount and direction of working and the intensity of
microsegregation is reduced somewhat.

A high degree of homogenization can be effected thermally by soaking the segregated material at an
elevated temperature. However, the soak times to ensure virtual complete homogeneity can be very
long, particularly below 1200 °C (Fig. 4).

Fig-4: Effect of homogenization temperature and time on the intensity of manganese segregation in
an EN39 steel. Source: Ref-3

A significant reduction of microsegregation can be achieved by a balanced combination of

mechanical and high-temperature heat treatments. Additional mechanical and/or thermal
treatments to remove or reduce microsegregation add to the cost of manufacture . Unless there is a
clear-cut reason to have a homogenous material, then perhaps things are best left as they are.

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Macrostructures and Microstructures:

Distribution of micro segregation in wrought steels depends on how much working has been done to
shape the part. In a large forging with little deformation, the cast structure is not eliminated, and
much of the dendritic form of segregation persists (Fig. 5).

Fig-5: Dendritic microsegregation in a fractured gear tooth.(Magnification 2x)

In small forgings, on the other hand, the metal is generally more severely worked. While
segregation, albeit less intense, survives the mechanical treatment, it is redistributed as alloy-rich
and alloy-lean bands flowing in directions dictated by the working process (Fig. 6 and 7). In micro
segregated materials, the heat treatment response of the alloy-rich areas is different from that of
the alloy-lean areas. Consequently, it is possible for each to transform at different times and to
different products on cooling from the austenitizing temperature. In low- and medium carbon steels,
austenitized and cooled, the micro segregation is identified as alternating areas of ferrite and
pearlite (banding).

Fig-5: Section through a forged sliding clutch Fig-6: Microstructure of an air-cooled carburized
hub. (magnification 0.8X) Bar end. (magnification 50X)

Reaustenitizing and fast cooling in the pearlitic range causes the carbon to redistribute fairly evenly
to give the impression that the segregation has been removed. Unfortunately, the alloy segregation
will still be there, essentially unaffected. It is merely masked by the redistributed carbon.

In the surface of a carburized case where the carbon may be evenly distributed, the presence of
microsegregation might be detected by observing alternate areas of martensite and ferrite,
depending on the actual compositions and the cooling rates involved.

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Effects of banding on Mechanical Properties

1. Effect on Hardness:

In general, hardness and microstructure will be heavily influenced by micro-structural banding.

Alloy-rich areas tend to transform to martensite, while alloy-lean areas show increasing amounts of
ferrite. Ferrite phase is softer than the martensite at a given carbon level and leads to low hardness.

2. Effect on Influence on Tensile and Toughness:

The tensile strength and yield strength are unlikely to be affected by the presence of
microsegregation.

It is unlikely that microsegregation has much influence on ductility and toughness indicators in the
longitudinal direction.

On the other hand, it does have a pronounced negative affect on those properties in the transverse
direction

3. Effect on fatigue life:

It is difficult to determine the effect of microsegregation alone on the various properties of steel
because of the presence of nonmetallic inclusions. Similarly, it is difficult to isolate the influence of
non-metallic inclusions on properties.

For high-cycle fatigue applications, the effects of nonmetallic inclusions far outweigh any adverse
influences of microsegregation. Presumably, the nonmetallics provide sites at which fatigue cracks
can initiate and from which they can grow.

In the low-cycle domain (in this example, <2x10 5cycles), microsegregation appears to be more
influential than nonmetallic inclusions.

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References:

1. Parrish, Geoffrey, Carburizing: Microstructure and Properties, ASM International, 1999

2. I. Laren and H. Fredriksson, Relations between Ingot Size and Microsegregation, Scand. J.
Metall., Vol 1, 1972, p 59—68
3. RG. Ward, Effect of Annealing on the Dendritic Segregation of Manganese in Steel, J. Iron
Steel Inst., Vol203, Sept 1965, p 930-932

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