In the present work, the martensite formation during heat treatment of 1026 steel was studied in order to acquire process knowledge and reinforce the effectiveness of infrared thermography method to evaluate the temperature distributions. Several tests were carried out and monitored by an infrared camera and thermocouples. Martensite fraction was evaluated with the aid of the Koistinen-Marburger model and adequate parameters describing phase transformations were obtained for 1026 steel samples. This research revealed the need of model adjustment in order to accurately describe the martensite transformation kinetics according to experimental results.
The experiments were carried with two steels with different chemical compositions, aiming at understanding and comparison with the available literature. The microstructures of steels 1045 and 4340 were characterized and quantified using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and optic microscopy (OM) with quantitative methods. Based on the experimental results, the amount of martensite, the hardness and the microhardness were determined, as a function of the distance from the quenching end, under different cooling conditions. For predicting the evolution of martensitic fraction along the sample, Koistinen-Marburger’s (K-M) model was adopted. It was found that the parameters recommended in the literature for the traditional K-M model do not represent accurately the results obtained for the steel samples under investigation. According to indications found in recent literature, parameter corrections were proposed, leading to a modified K-M model which better represents the transformations observed in the different examined steels.
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