Influence of Heat-Treatment on Enhancement of Yield Strength and Hardness by Ti-V-Nb Alloying in High-Manganese Austenitic Steel

To deal with the problem of poor yield strength and hardness in the initial use of high-manganese austenitic steel, we investigated the alloying design, microstructure, precipitates, mechanical properties, and comprehensive strengthening mechanism of high-manganese austenitic steel through two novel heat-treatment processes, namely continuous heating process (CHP) and segmented heat preservation process (SHPP). In this work, austenitic Fe-0.9C-17Mn-0.8Si-2.0Cr-0.3Ni-0.5Cu-0.7Mo steels alloyed with Ti, V, and Nb were designed. The grain size of SHPP steels was smaller than that of CHP steels due to the smaller size of precipitates. The results of mechanical experiments showed that the yield strength and impact toughness of SHPP steel were obviously higher than those of CHP steel, but the Brinell hardness of CHP steel was higher than that of SHPP steel. The higher Brinell hardness and poorer impact toughness of CHP steel were mainly due to the larger-sized precipitates. Finally, solid-solution strengthening played the most effective role of increasing the yield and tensile strengths of the two steels.