Development of Low Carbon Microalloyed Bainitic Steels for Structural Plate Applications

Abstract

Steels with bainitic microstructures show the capacity to fulfil the requirements of high strength and low temperature toughness necessary for plate steels in specialised industrial constructions. The introduction of steels with higher strength allows for weight reductions of steel constructions. This paper investigates the development of hot rolled structural plate steels through laboratory hot rolling simulations of thermo-mechanically controlled processes (TMCP). Specific alloying and microalloying along with an optimised TMCP process has allowed high tensile properties to be achieved in combination with high levels of toughness. Tensile strengths of up to 900 MPa have been achieved with Charpy V-notch toughness greater than 200J at –40°C. Elements such as molybdenum, niobium and boron have been added to low carbon steels to promote the formation of fully bainitic microstructures with much lightened chemical compositions. The presented concepts allow the production of steel grades above S500 up to S690.