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Materials Today: Proceedings 5 (2018) 14918–14922 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings

ICAPMA_2017

Mechanical properties optimization of the modified 410 martensitic

stainless steel by heat treatment process
Efendi Mabruri*, Siska Prifiharni, Moch. Syaiful Anwar,
Toni B. Romijarso, Bintang Adjiantoro
Research Center for Metallurgy and Materials, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Kawasan Puspiptek Gd. 470 Serpong,
Tangerang Selatan 15314, Indonesia

Abstract

The 410-3Ni3Mo martensitic stainless steels for steam turbine blade application have been developed with improved pitting
resistance compared to standard 410 steels. This paper reports the optimization of mechanical properties and microstructure of
the developed steels by heat treatment process. The experimental results showed that the steels quenched at 1100oC had highest
values of both tensile strength and elongation after subsequent high temperature tempering of 600, 650 and 700oC. Whereas, the
mechanical properties of the steels decreased as tempering temperature increased. The best combination of tensile strength of
1300 MPa and elongation of 10.5% were obtained by quenching at 1100oC and subsequent tempered at 600oC. The mechanical
properties obtained in this study were correlated with the microstructure developed in the steels after heat treatment characterized
by XRD and SEM.
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of 3rd International Conference on Applied Physics and Materials Applications.

Keywords: Modified 410-3Ni3Mo; Martensitic stainless steel ; Heat treatment ; Mechanical properties optimization ; Steam turbine blade

1. Introduction

In steam power plant, turbine blade is one of the criticl parts subjected to severe condition of stress and
environment. The failures of the turbine blades are frequently encountered during services especially in the last
stage of low pressure blades. The most typical failure mechanism are environmentally assisted craking [1,2] due to

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +62-756-0911; fax: +62-756-0553.

E-mail address: effe004@lipi.go.id

2214-7853© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of 3rd International Conference on Applied Physics and Materials Applications.
 E. Mabruri et al./ Materials Today: Proceedings 5 (2018) 14918–14922 14919

interaction of high stress and corrosive environment operated in the turbine system. In order to improve the
resistance to the failure, the turbine blade material which usually made from martensitic stainless steels type
403/410 has been continuously modified with improved mechanical and corrosion properties [3,4,5]. Recently, the
410-3Ni3Mo martensitic stainless steels have been developed with improved pitting resistance and better
mechanical properties compared to standard 410 steels [6,7]. The addition of Mo is suggested to increase both
pitting resistance and strength, while Ni improves toughness and avoiding -ferrite due to high amount of Mo. Thus,
the combination of Ni and Mo in quite high similar concentration is suggested to optimize the microstructure
resulting in good combination of mechanical and corosion properties.
It is well-known that the microstructure and mechanical properties of the martensitic stainless steels is strongly
depend on the heat treatment process. The heat treatment of the martensitic stainless steels consists of austenitizing
and quenching to facilitate formation of hard martensite structure and subsequent tempering to improve ductility and
toughness. The austenitizing is performed at high temperature of austenite phase and determines the extent of
carbide dissolution, dissolved alloying elements, grain growth and martensite characteristic. While, tempering is
conducted at a lower temperature to facilitate relaxation of hard martensite and precipitation of carbides. However,
the tempering process for steam turbine blade application should be performed at temperature higher than steam
temperature in order to ensure stable microstructure during services. The proper combination of austenitizing or
quenching temperature and tempering temperature results in suitable microstructure and optimized properties of the
martensitic stainless steels. This paper repotrs the optimization of mechanical properties and microstructure of the
developed 410-3Ni3Mo steel by combination of quenching temperature and tempering temperature.

2. Experimental details

The 410-3Ni3Mo martensitic stainless steel ingots with 5x5x10 cm in sizes were prepared in induction melting
furnace. The chemical composition of the steel is shown in Table 1 according to testing using Optical Emission
Spectrometer (OES). To make wrought alloy, the ingots were forged at high temperature of 1200oC several time
until the sizes down to 2 cm of thickness. The forged steels were annealed at temperature 800oC for 20 h for
softening to facilitate machining the samples for testing. The annealed steels were then machined to prepared
specimens for tensile test, XRD and SEM. The steel samples were austenitized at various temperatures of 100, 1050
and 1100 oC for 1 h followed by quenching in oil. The austenitized samples were subsequently tempered at various
temperature of 600, 650 and 700 oC for 1 h followed by air cooling. The heat treated samples for tensile test were
surface ground to remove oxidation scales. The tensile testing of the steels specimen was carried out by using
universal testing machine until the specimen broke. The samples for microstructural observation were prepared by
standard metallographic operations and etching was performed by using Kalling reagent. The microstructural images
were taken by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The samples for XRD were surface ground with SiC abrasive
paper until grit size of P800.

Table 1. Chemical composition (wt. %) of the 410-3Ni3Mo steels prepared in this work.

Steel C S P Mn Si Cr Mo Ni Fe

410-3Ni3Mo 0.10 0.005 0.02 0.61 0.24 12.73 2.52 2.93 Bal.

3. Results and discussion

The stress-strain curves of tensile test for the 410-3Ni3Mo martensitic stainless steels in various heat treatment
conditions were presented in Fig. 1. It can be seen that the steel quenched at 1000oC and tempered at any applied
temperature (Fig. 1.a) exhibits no plastic region and no strain hardening region as well. The narrow plastic region
can be observed from the curves for the steels quenched at higher temperature in Fig. 1 (a) and (b). The largest
region for plstic region and strain hardening exhibited by the steels quenched at 1100oC and tempered at 600oC. The
absence or narrow of the plastic region in these steels are assosiated with the existence of martensite phase in the
14920 E. Mabruri et al./ Materials Today: Proceedings 5 (2018) 14918–14922

microstructure of tempered steels. The martensite is ferrite phase with lattice distortion or extention due to
supersaturation with carbon, therefore it absorbs little or no deformation energy during tensile test. The larger plastic
region in the steels quenched at higer temperature (1050 and 1100 oC) may be related to the existence of reatined
austenite phase (in addition to martensite) in the microstructure, the softer phase which can absorb deformation
energy. As it already known that higher austenitizing temperature before quenching dissolves more carbides and
increases amount of austenite phase and may provide retained austenite after quenching to room temperature [8].
The largest plastic region combined with largest maximum stress and strain exhibited by the steel quenched at
1100oC and tempered at 600oC. As the consequence, this steel has highest toughness with widest area below the
stress-strain curve as displayed in Fig. 1(c).

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 1. Stress-strain curves of the 410-3Ni3Mo steel in tempered condition at 600, 650 and 700 oC with previously quenched at (a) 1000 (b) 1050 and
(c) 1100 oC.

(a) (b)

Fig. 2. (a) Tensile strength and (b) elongation of the 410-3Ni3Mo steel at various quenching and tempering temperatures.

The tensile strength and elongation of the 410-3Ni3Mo steel as function of tempering temperature for various
quenching temperature are shown in Fig. 2. It can be observed from this figure that both the tensile strength and
elongation tend to decrease with increasing of tempering temperature from 600 to 700oC for all quenching
temperatures applied in this work. With respect to quenching temperature, the strength and elongation have similar
trend, where they slightly decrease from 1000 to 1050oC and then increase at 1100oC. The steels quenched at
1100oC show largest value of both tensile strength and elongation for all applied tempering temperatures. The
combination of largest tensile strength of 1300 MPa and largest elongation of 10.5% was obtained by quenching at
 E. Mabruri et al./ Materials Today: Proceedings 5 (2018) 14918–14922 14921

1100oC and subsequent tempering at 600oC. This good combination of high strength and toughness is suitable for
structural parts experienced with high stress in service such as steam turbine blade.
The mechanical properties of the steels are strongly related to the phases contained in its microstructures. The
microstructures of the 410-3Ni3Mo characterized by XRD and SEM are presented in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, respectively.
To observe the change of microstructure with heat treatment parameters, the combination of quenching and
tempering temperatures of 1000-600, 1100-600 and 1100-700oC was selected. The indentified phases in the steel
heat treated at 1000-600oC are -Fe and small amount of -Fe. At the higher quenching temperature 1100oC with
constant tempering temperature 600oC (1100-600) the peaks of -Fe phase significantly diminishes and peaks of -
Fe phase increase. The -Fe phase appears again in the steel with higher tempering temperature 700oC as in XRD
peaks of 1100-700.

Fig. 3. XRD peaks of of the 410-3Ni3Mo steel at several combination of quenching and tempering temperatures.

Fig. 4. SEM images for the microstructure of the 410-3Ni3Mo steel with heat treatment condition of (a) 1000-600 (b) 1100-600 and (c) 1100-700oC.

The -Fe phase in the steel can be estimated as martensite and -ferrite which can be seen in the SEM image in
Fig. 4(a) with lath and island-like shapes, respectively. The formation of -ferrite in this steel is attributed to Mo
which is a ferrite stabilizing element with relatively high level of 3 wt.%. Other researcher also reported the
formation of -ferrite in the martensitic stainless steel containing 1 wt.% Mo and even in steel with relatively zero
Mo [9]. The -ferrite exists as high temperature phase in equilibrium diagram and its formation at room temperature
occurs due to non-equilibrium solidification. The high temperature annealing should be accomplished to diminish
this phase. The austenitizing at 1000oC applied in this work has not been removed this phase. Higher austenitizing
temperature of 1100oC reduces the -ferrite phase as can be seen in XRD peaks in Fig. 3 (1100-600) and SEM
image in Fig. 4(b). The appearing -Fe in the steel at higher tempering temperature 700oC associated with
decomposition of -Fe into ferrite and carbides. In other hand, the -Fe phase appearing in XRD with strong peaks
for the steel quenched at 1100oC (as in XRD peaks 1100-600 and 1100-700 in Fig. 3) is estimated as retained
14922 E. Mabruri et al./ Materials Today: Proceedings 5 (2018) 14918–14922

austenite. The existence of retained austenite in the higher austenitizing temperature indicating incomplete
transformation of austenite to martensite in room temperature. This is attributed to depression of martensite start
temperature (Ms) due to increasing of dissolution of carbide forming elements such as Cr and Mo at higher
temperature into austenite phase [8]. At lower quenching temperature 1000oC the retained austenite almost does not
appear (XRD peaks 1000-600) indicating very low extent of dissolution of carbide forming elements into austenite
at this temperature.
With respect to martensite as the major contributor for hardening of these steels, the influence of heat treatment
combination can be observed to change the fraction and size of the martensite. At lower quenching temperature
1000oC the fraction, the fraction of martensite seem to be lower due to the existence of large amount of -ferrite
(Fig.4). At higher quenching temperature 1100oC the fraction of martensite increase with diminishing of -ferrite. At
this quenching temperature, the subsequent tempering at 600oC results in martensite with relatively fine size. While,
coarse martensite is observed in the steel tempered at higher tempering temperature 700oC as in Fig. 4(c). As the
conclusion, with increasing quenching temperature to 1100oC, the -ferrite significantly diminishes and the retained
austenite content increases. Whereas, with increasing tempering temperature to 700oC, some retained austenite
decomposes to ferrite and carbides and the martensite coarsening occurs. The steel quenched at 1100oC and
tempered at 600oC which consist of fine-size martensite, retained austenite and less amount of -ferrite exhibits the
best combination of strength and elongation.

4. Conclusion

The mechanical properties and microstructure of the 410-3Ni3Mo martensitic stainless steel has been
investigated in relation with various combination of quenching and tempering temperatures. The tensile strength and
elongation tend to decrease with increasing of tempering temperature from 600 to 700oC for all quenching
temperatures applied in this work. The steels quenched at 1100oC show largest value of both tensile strength and
elongation for all applied tempering temperatures. The combination of largest tensile strength of 1300 MPa and
largest elongation of 10.5% was obtained by quenching at 1100oC and subsequent tempering at 600oC with the
microstructure consisted of fine-size martensite, retained austenite and less amount of -ferrite.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) for supporting this research through The
LIPI Excelence Program.

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