TY - JOUR A1 - Zhang, Lei A1 - Kannengießer, Thomas T1 - Austenite grain growth and microstructure control in simulated heat affected zones of microalloyed HSLA steel N2 - The roles of microalloying niobium, titanium and vanadium for controlling austenite grain growth, microstructure evolution and hardness were investigated at different simulated heat affected zones (HAZ) for high strength low alloy (HSLA) S690QL steel. High resolution FEG-SEM has been used to characterize fine bainitic ferrite, martensite and nanosized second phases at simulated coarse and fine grain HAZs. It was found that for Ti bearing steel (Ti/N ratio is 2) austenite grain had the slowest growth rate due to the presence of most stable TiN. The fine cuboidal particles promoted intragranular acicular ferrite (IGF) formation. Nb bearing steel exhibited relatively weaker grain growth retardation compared with titanium bearing steels and a mixed microstructure of bainite and martensite was present for all simulated HAZs. IGF existed at coarse grain HAZ of Ti+V bearing steel but it was totally replaced by bainite at fine grain HAZs. Hardness result was closely related to the morphology of bainitic ferrite, intragranular ferrite and second phases within ferrite. The microstructure and hardness results of different simulated HAZs were in good agreement with welded experimental results. KW - Hardness measurement KW - Microstructure KW - Microalloyed steel KW - Welding KW - Grain growth PY - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2014.06.106 SN - 0921-5093 VL - 613 SP - 326 EP - 335 PB - Elsevier B.V. AN - OPUS4-36520 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -