Materials and Design 29 (2008) 1840–1844

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Materials and Design

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Prediction of austenite grain growth during austenitization of low alloy steels

Seok-Jae Lee, Young-Kook Lee *
Department of Metallurgical Engineering, Yonsei University, 134 Sinchon-dong, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 120-749, Republic of Korea

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

Article history: Although the prior austenite grain size (AGS) of heat treatable low alloy steels is an influential factor in
Received 30 May 2007 phase transformations during quenching and in mechanical properties, there are few equations to predict
Accepted 13 March 2008 the AGS considering alloying element effects. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of
Available online 28 March 2008
alloying elements on austenite grain growth and to propose an empirical equation for predicting the AGS
of global low alloy steels. The Arrhenius type equation was proposed based on the measured AGSs of the
Keywords: 16 different low alloy steels and the predicted results were in a good agreement with the measured data.
Austenite grain growth
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Solute drag
Low alloy steels

1. Introduction
In the heat treatment process, the austenite grain size (AGS) be-
fore quenching tremendously influences diffusive and diffusionless
phase transformations, precipitation, and mechanical properties
such as strength, hardness, toughness, and ductility. A plenty of re-
searches have been made to get better understanding and control-
ling of the austenite grain size during austenitizing process of the
steels over the past half a century [1–8]. Even if the austenite grain
size is fine just after the reverse transformation during heat-up to
austenite region, the grain growth can easily occur especially in
plain carbon steels to reduce the grain boundary free energy by
thermally activated atomic processes. As alloying elements are
added in the carbon steels, the grain growth rate usually decreases
due to the solute dragging effect of the alloying elements segre-
gated into austenite grain boundaries [9,10]. If the alloying ele-
ments precipitate as carbides or nitrides in austenite, the
precipitates also lower the grain growth rate by pinning the grain
boundaries [11,12].
Up to date, several theoretical and semi-empirical models for
predicting austenite grain size during austenitization considering
the alloying element effects have been suggested [1–8]. The theo-
retical models contain thermodynamic parameters like grain
boundary energy, activation energy for grain boundary diffusion,
and so on, which are not easily obtainable. Some empirical equa-
tions have been suggested simply as functions of temperature
and time of austenitization only for plain carbon–manganese steels
[4,5,8], which are not suitable for low alloy steels. In this study, an
empirical equation for predicting the AGSs of global low alloy
steels is proposed from an industrial point of view. A newly devel-
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 2 2123 2831; fax: +82 2 312 5375.
E-mail address: yklee@yonsei.ac.kr (Y.-K. Lee).
oped equation for predicting the AGS of low alloy steels containing
Cr, Ni, and Mo was validated by comparing the measured and cal-
culated AGSs of various low alloy steels.
2. Experimental procedure
The total 16 different low alloy steels were prepared using a vacuum induction
furnace to investigate the effects of Ni, Cr, Mo, and C on austenite grain growth. The
chemical composition range of the low alloy steels used in this study was shown in
Table 1. The ingots were homogenized at 1300 °C for 3 h and hot rolled at 1000 °C to
8 mm thick plates. The specimens were taken from the plate and austenitized in
nitrogen atmosphere at different temperatures from 850 to 1200 °C for maximum
3 h using a tube furnace, followed by water quenching. For the measurement of
AGS, the quenched specimens were etched by a saturated picric acid after mechan-
ical polishing with 1 lm diamond suspension. Two methods by using the line inter-
cept and the area of average grain were tried to measure the AGS of the etched
specimens [13].
3. Results and discussion
Fig. 1 shows optical microstructures of the quenched specimens
of a Cr–Mo steel held at different austenitizing temperatures for
10 min. The grains are almost equaxed even at 900 °C and were
clearly coarsened with increasing austenitizing temperature. The
fine and coarse grains still coexist at such a temperature as high
as 1050 °C. On the basis of optical measurements, the average
AGS was quantitatively evaluated as functions of austenitizing
temperature and time. The linear proportion between the recipro-
cal of temperature and the natural logarithmic values of AGS is
shown in Fig. 2a, while the exponential increment of AGS with a
holding time is in Fig. 2b, respectively.
The effects of Ni, Cr, and Mo on austenite grain growth are
quantitatively compared based on the analysis of measured AGSs
in Fig. 3. The reduction in AGS with an addition of alloying ele-
ments was greater at 1200 °C. The Mo is more effective to prevent

0261-3069/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2008.03.009
 S.-J. Lee, Y.-K. Lee / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 1840–1844 1841

Table 1 the growth of austenite grains by the segregation of the alloying

Chemical composition of the experimental steels (wt.%) atoms toward grain boundaries and that the difference in atomic
C Mn Si Ni Cr Mo size between Fe and an alloying element affects the dragging effect
Min. 0.15 0.73 0.20 0.00 0.00 0.00 on grain boundaries [14]. The difference in atomic radius between
Max. 0.41 0.85 0.25 1.80 1.45 0.45 Fe and Ni in austenite is 0.007 nm and 0.01 nm between Fe and Cr,
and 0.034 nm between Fe and Mo, respectively [15]. Papworth and
Williams have investigated the segregation to austenite grain
austenite grain growth than Ni or Cr regardless of austenitizing boundary in low alloy steels by X-ray mapping in the field emis-
temperature. Similarly, the C addition has an effect on obstructing sion gun scanning transmission electron microscopy (FEGSTEM)
austenite grain growth as shown in Fig. 4. It has been reported that and concluded that Ni, Cr, Mo, Mn and P segregate to austenite
the alloying elements in a solute state play a role as obstacles to grain boundary [16].

Fig. 1. Variation of austenite grain size in a water quenched Cr–Mo steel held at different austenitizing temperatures for 10 min: (a) 900 °C, (b) 950 °C, (c) 1000 °C,
(d) 1050 °C, (e) 1100 °C, and (f) 1150 °C.
1842 S.-J. Lee, Y.-K. Lee / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 1840–1844

Fig. 4. Effect of carbon on preventing austenite grain growth at different austen-

itizing temperatures for 10 min in Cr–Mo steels.

and n time exponent. The activation energy can be obtained by

so-called Arrhenius plot using experimental data. The Arrhenius
type equations for predicting the AGS in plain carbon–manganese
steels have been previously proposed [4,5,8] and described in
Eqs. (2)–(5).
 
94000 0:194
d ¼ 1:324  105 exp  t ð2Þ
RT
 
126000 0:18
d ¼ 9:1  106 exp  t ð3Þ
RT
 
69000 0:19
d ¼ 7:9  104 exp  t ð4Þ
RT
Fig. 2. Effects of (a) austenitizing temperature holding for 1 h and (b) austenitizing
time at 900 °C on austenite grain size of a Cr steel.  
141000 0:12
d ¼ 4:1  107 exp  t ð5Þ
RT
The equations cannot be applied to low alloy steels but to plain
carbon–manganese steels because of the solute dragging effect of
alloying elements (Ni, Cr, and Mo) segregated into the austenite
grain boundaries. Thus, the 89 measured data were used to devel-
op an Arrhenius type predictive equation of the AGS in low alloy
steels. Considering that the activation energy (Q) for grain growth
is affected by the amount and kind of the alloying elements, it can
be as follows:
X4  
@Q i
Q ¼ Q0 þ Xi ð6Þ
i¼1
@X i

where Q0 is the activation energy (J/mol) for austenite grain growth

Fig. 3. Effects of the alloying elements on preventing austenite grain growth at
different austenitizing temperatures for 1 h.
The relation between austenite grain growth and austenitizing
condition has been explained by a thermally activated atomic jump
process, which is typically expressed by the following Arrhenius
type equation:
 
Q n
d ¼ A exp  t ð1Þ
RT
where d is grain size in micrometer, A a constant, Q activation en-
ergy (J/mol) for grain growth, R gas constant (8.314 J/mol/K), T
austenitizing temperature in Kelvin, t austenitizing time in second,
of an alloy containing almost constant amounts of Mn and Si, as
shown in Table 1, Qi is the increment in activation energy by adding
another alloying element i such as Ni, Cr, Mo, and C, and Xi is the
concentration of i element in weight percent. The empirical equa-
tion for predicting the AGS of low alloy steels during austenitization
has been made based on the Arrhenius type equation by fitting the
measured AGS data as functions of alloying elements, temperature,
and time (Eq. (7))
 
89098 þ 3581C þ 1211Ni þ 1443Cr þ 4031Mo 0:211
d ¼ 76671 exp  t
RT
ð7Þ
The predicted AGSs using Eqs. (2)–(5) and (7) were compared to
the measured ones of low alloy steels in Fig. 5. Two comparing
parameters (D and E) for the accuracy of the equation are used in
this figure. The parameter D is the average absolute distance
 S.-J. Lee, Y.-K. Lee / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 1840–1844 1843

Fig. 5. Comparison of the austenite grain size calculated by the previous and proposed equations with the measured one: (a) Eq. (2), (b) Eq. (3), (c) Eq. (4), (d) Eq. (5), and (e)
Eq. (7).

XN  !,
between the line in the middle of the figure and markers, while the  1 
D¼ pffiffiffi ðdcal  dexp Þ N ð8Þ
parameter E is the average, signed distance between the line in the  
i¼1 2
middle of the figure and markers.
1844 S.-J. Lee, Y.-K. Lee / Materials and Design 29 (2008) 1840–1844
!,
XN
1 References
E¼ pffiffiffi ðdcal  dexp Þ N ð9Þ
i¼1 2
Here, N is the number of experimental data and both D and E
have units in ASTM grain size number. The smaller values of D indi-
cate a better match between predicted and experimental results
while E indicates whether a equation is, on average, predicting val-
ues that are too high (positive values) or too low (negative values).
As expected, the proposed equation in this study shows the small-
est D and E values, because it was made by fitting the measured
data in Fig. 5. The same predicted AGSs paralleled to x axis in
Fig. 5a–d indicate the absence of alloying element effect in the pre-
viously proposed equations. Eq. (7) is expected to be used for pre-
dicting the AGSs of most of commercial low alloy steels.
4. Conclusion
To predict the change in AGS of global low alloy steels during
austenitization, the 16 different low alloy steels were austenitized
at different temperatures of 850–1200 °C for maximum 3 h and the
AGSs were measured. The addition of Mo was found more effective
to prevent austenite grain growth than Cr or Ni. The empirical
equation for predicting the AGS of low alloy steels was suggested
considering the alloying element effects on the activation energy
for grain growth using the measured AGSs and the steel chemistry.
In a technical point of view, this AGS equation would be contrib-
uted to the better prediction of the AGS of global low alloy steels.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the National Core Research
Center (NCRC) program from MOST and KOSEF (No. R15-2006-
022-01002-0).
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