Materials Letters 292 (2021) 129624

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

New insight into the hardenability of high strength low alloy steel from
the perspective of crystallography
Y.S. Yu a, Z.Q. Wang a, B.B. Wu b, X.Q. Rong a, L.J. Wei a, S.F. Yuan c, H. Guo a,⇑, C.J. Shang a,c,⇑
a
Collaborative Innovation Center of Steel Technology, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
b
Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
c
Yangjiang Branch, Guangdong Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology (Yangjiang Advanced Alloys Laboratory), Yangjiang 529500, China

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

Article history: A Jominy specimen of low carbon low alloy steel was investigated to elucidate the relationship between
Received 22 December 2020 crystallographic features and hardness. As the Jominy distance increased from 2 to 20 mm and then to
Received in revised form 23 February 2021 50 mm, the morphological structure changed from lath martensite to lath bainite and then to granular
Accepted 27 February 2021
bainite. The cooling rate was lowered with increasing Jominy distance, and the density of high angle grain
Available online 6 March 2021
boundaries (HAGBs) and the hardness were decreased, showing a near-linear relationship between the
HAGBs density and hardness. The high cooling rate led to a large driving force and a low transformation
Keywords:
temperature, which contributed to producing high density of HAGBs and hardness.
High strength low alloy steel
Hardenability
Ó 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Grain boundaries
Variant pairing
Phase transformation

1. Introduction we studied a Jominy specimen of low alloy steel to elucidate the

relationship between crystallographic features and hardness.
Hardenability is a key characteristic for high strength ultra-
heavy plate steel and high hardenability can be achieved by tailor-
2. Experimental
ing steel composition [1]. Accordingly, numerous experiments
have been carried out to optimize alloy design, from which the
The chemical composition of experimental steel is Fe-0.10C-
effects of alloying elements on hardenability have been discussed
0.23Si-1.00Mn-2.58 (Cr + Ni + Cu + Mo)-0.12 (Nb + V + Ti)-0.001
extensively [2–4]. High hardenability means that phase transfor-
4B (wt%). The Jominy test was adopted to evaluate the hardenabil-
mation products at low cooling rates still sustain high hardness.
ity according to the ASTM A255 standard and the test bar was end-
Jominy end-quench test is a relatively simple test and is univer-
quenched from 900 °C. The samples for microstructure observation
sally adopted in evaluating hardenability [1]. With the increase
were cut at the Jominy distance of 2, 20 and 50 mm from the test
of Jominy distance from the surface of the end-quenched speci-
bar. After being mounted and mechanically polished, the samples
men, the cooling rates would be lowered, and the phase transfor-
were etched by 3% nital solution and electropolished using a solu-
mation products may change from lath martensite to granular
tion of 10% perchloric acid in ethanol to obtain morphology and
bainite, resulting in a lower hardness [4]. The research on harden-
crystallography information, respectively. The information was
ability has long focused on the microstructure-hardness relation-
acquired by using TESCAN MIRA3 FE-SEM equipped with an Oxford
ship from the perspective of morphology [1]. It is, however,
EBSD detector. HKL Channel 5 was used for post-processing EBSD
difficult to distinguish martensite from bainite in low carbon low
data, and MATLABÒ software was employed to calculate the orien-
alloy steels. A quantitative analysis of the microstructure from
tation relationship (OR) and analyze grain boundary length
the crystallographic perspective can greatly help to distinguish
quantitatively.
the structures and understand the hardenability. In this report,

3. Results and discussion

⇑ Corresponding authors at: Collaborative Innovation Center of Steel Technology,
University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China (C.J. Shang). Fig. 1a shows the hardenability curve of experimental steel
E-mail addresses: guohui@mater.ustb.edu.cn (H. Guo), cjshang@ustb.edu.cn (C.J. obtained by Jominy test. With increasing the Jominy distance, the
Shang). Rockwell hardness decreased dramatically. The hardness of end-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2021.129624
0167-577X/Ó 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Y.S. Yu, Z.Q. Wang, B.B. Wu et al. Materials Letters 292 (2021) 129624

Fig. 1. Hardenability (a) and CCT (b) curves of experimental steel. CR and Ts stand for cooling rate and starting temperature of transformation, respectively.

quenched samples with Jominy distance of 2, 20 and 50 mm is
40.6, 36.8 and 32.3 HRC, respectively. The continuous cooling
transformation (CCT) diagram predicted by JMatProÒ software is
depicted in Fig. 1b. According to ASM Handbook [1], the equivalent
cooling rates of the samples at 2, 20 and 50 mm are about 150, 8
and 2 °C/s, respectively. Accordingly, the starting temperatures of
transformation were 403, 484 and 540 °C respectively, and the
microstructure at 2 mm would be martensite, while the
microstructure at 20 and 50 mm would be dominated by bainite.
The SEM micrographs and band contrast maps depicting the
boundary distribution of samples are shown in Fig. 2. The morpho-
logical structures at 2, 20 and 50 mm were mainly characterized by
typical lath martensite, lath bainite and granular bainite respec-
tively, and the matrix was decorated with bright and fine carbides.
A notable difference in density of low/high angle grain boundaries
(LAGBs/HAGBs) was observed in the samples. The density of LAGBs
at 2, 20 and 50 mm was 0.60, 0.19 and 0.25 lm 1 respectively, and
the density of HAGBs was 1.72, 1.35 and 0.77 lm 1, respectively.
Clearly, the density of HAGBs decreased significantly with increas-
ing Jominy distance.
Fig. 3 shows the relationship between HAGBs and hardness.
With the decrease in density of HAGBs, the hardness decreased,
showing a near-linear relationship with HAGBs density. A higher
density of HAGBs means finer effective grain, which contributes
to a higher hardness. Previous studies have shown that hardness
is related to precipitation hardening, solid solution hardening, dis-
location hardening and fine grain size strengthening [4,5]. In
higher cooling rate conditions, more carbon was entrapped in the
matrix, which resulted in a higher solid solution strengthening
effect. Moreover, high cooling rates conduced to obtain low-

Fig. 2. SEM micrographs and band contrast (BC) maps depicting boundary distribution of samples with Jominy distance of (a, d) 2, (b, e) 20 and (c, f) 50 mm (In BC maps,
white line: 5° < h < 15°, black line: 15° < h < 45°, yellow line: h > 45°; h – misorientation).

2
Y.S. Yu, Z.Q. Wang, B.B. Wu et al.
Fig. 3. Relationship between the density of HAGBs and hardness.
temperature transformed products with high density of disloca-
tions and HAGBs, which was beneficial to the increase of hardness.
It is concluded that the phase transformation product with a high
density of HAGBs facilitates the increase of hardness.
The HAGBs are related to the variant pairing, which originates
from different variant pairs [6,7]. Therefore, it is necessary to make
a quantitative analysis of the variant pairs. The OR (u1, U, u2)
between parent austenite and product variants of the samples at
2, 20 and 50 mm was determined to be (116.4°, 8.5°, 199.6°),
(121.5°, 9.3°, 194.8°) and (117.9°, 8.3°, 118.0°) by using a MATLAB
regression program. Based on the OR, the length fraction of inter-
variant boundaries was calculated (Fig. 4a). It can be seen that
most of the inter-variant boundaries belonged to the variants
within the same crystallographic packets (i.e., V1/V2–V6). In the
sample at 2 mm, the fraction of V1/V2 boundary was the highest,
denoting that the variant pairing is dominated by V1/V2. However,
in the samples at 20 and 50 mm, the dominant variant pair was V1/
V4. The inter-variant boundaries were further categorized into
block, sub-block and packet boundaries according to the boundary
types [6,8]. The inter-variant boundaries from V1/V2, V1/V3 (& V5)
and V1/V6 are block boundaries, V1/V4 is sub-block boundary, and
V1/V7 to V1/V24 are packet boundaries. Obviously, the HAGBs
mainly derived from the block boundaries. The samples at 2 and
20 mm exhibited a much higher fraction of block boundaries com-
Fig. 4. Length fraction of inter-variant boundaries (a) and schematics illustrating the evolution of crystallographic features and hardness (b) of the samples. In the schematic
grains, the region composed of variants belonging to the same Bain group is represented by the same color. White and black lines represent low and high angle boundaries,
respectively.
3
Materials Letters 292 (2021) 129624
pared with the sample at 50 mm, while the sample at 50 mm
showed a higher fraction of sub-block boundary.
Based on the above analysis, schematics illustrating the evolu-
tion of crystallographic features and hardness of the samples were
proposed (Fig. 4b). With the increase of Jominy distance, the cool-
ing rate was decreased, and the dominance of variant pairing
shifted from V1/V2 to V1/V4. As a result, the density of HAGBs
was decreased and thus the hardness was reduced. The variant
pairing is related to the driving force for transformation and self-
accommodation of transformation strain [8]. The self-
accommodation will be enhanced when the austenite is strength-
ened through lowering the transformation temperature. A larger
driving force and a lower transformation temperature can con-
tribute to the formation of variants and refinement of packets
and blocks, and thus higher density of HAGBs [8,9]. As the Jominy
distance increased, the cooling rate was lowered, and the driving
force decreased whilst the transformation temperature increased.
Consequently, the density of HAGBs decreased with the Jominy
distance. For V1/V2 variant pairs, the highest content among the
three samples was found in the sample at 20 mm, which is due
to the local carbon enrichment in the latter-transformed austenite
during continue cooling transformation [10].
4. Conclusions
The microstructure and hardness in a Jominy specimen of low
carbon low alloy steel were investigated, focusing on the relation-
ship between crystallographic features and hardness. The
microstructures of end-quenched samples with Jominy distance
of 2, 20 and 50 mm were typical lath martensite, lath bainite and
granular bainite, respectively. With the increase of Jominy dis-
tance, the cooling rate was lowered, and the dominance of variant
pairing shifted from V1/V2 to V1/V4. In addition, the density of
high angle grain boundaries (HAGBs) and hardness were
decreased, showing a near-linear relationship between the HAGBs
density and hardness. The high density of HAGBs and hardness
were related to the large driving force and low transformation
temperature, which was triggered by the high cooling rate.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Y.S. Yu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal
analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Visualization. Z.Q.
Wang: Software, Writing - review & editing. B.B. Wu: Validation,
Y.S. Yu, Z.Q. Wang, B.B. Wu et al.
Writing - review & editing. X.Q. Rong: Validation, Writing - review
& editing. L.J. Wei: Validation, Writing - review & editing. S.F.
Yuan: Writing - review & editing. H. Guo: Validation, Writing -
review & editing, Project administration, Funding acquisition. C.J.
Shang: Conceptualization, Resources, Validation, Writing - review
& editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.
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.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key Research and
Development Program of China (No. 2017YFB0304800). H. Guo
acknowledges the financial support from the China Scholarship
Council (No. 201706465056).
Materials Letters 292 (2021) 129624
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