Effect of Heating Rate on Accelerated Carbide Spheroidisation (ASR) in 100CrMnSi6-4 Bearing Steel

Abstract

Abstract Typical processing routes for bearing steels include a soft annealing stage, the purpose of which is to obtain a microstructure containing globular carbides in ferritic matrix. A newly developed process called ASR cuts the carbide spheroidisation times several fold, producing considerably finer globular carbides than conventional soft annealing. The present paper explores the effect of the heating rate and temperature on the accelerated carbide spheroidisation process and on the resulting hardness. Accelerated spheroidisation was achieved by thermal cycling for several minutes around various temperatures close to the transformation temperature at various heating rates applied by induction heating.