Effect of Austenitizing Temperature on Microstructure and Properties of High Carbon Cu-bearing Martensitic Stainless Steel
The effect of copper(Cu)addition on the microstructure,mechanical properties and corro-sion resistance of high carbon Cu-bearing martensitic stainless steels,being subjected to austenitizing treatment at different temperatures was investigated by means of optical microscopy(OM),scanning elec-tron microscope,(SEM),X-Ray diffraction(XRD),electron back scattered diffraction(EBSD)and trans-mission electron microscope(TEM).The results show that the fraction of carbides decreases and the con-tent of retained austenite increases gradually with the increase of austenitizing temperature.The addition of Cu has a positive effect on the amount of precipitation for small size carbides,which distributed in the matrix,and increases the retained austenite significantly.The hardness of high carbon Cu-bearing mar-tensitic stainless steel decreases slightly after Cu addition,because the softening effect of retained aus-tenite is greater than the strengthening effect of martensite.Meanwhile,the impact absorption energy in-crease from 1.5 J to 9.1 J,indicating that the toughness of the steel was enhanced significantly.Besides,the free-corrosion potential of the Cu-bearing stainless steels decreases due to the increase of retained austenite volume fraction.