Acicular ferrite formation during hot plate rolling for pipeline steels

The transformation of supercooled austenite in a commercial pipeline steel was investigated by means of continuous cooling transformation (CCT) and hot simulation experiments. Based on the obtained results, an improved thermomechanical control process (TMCP) was proposed, which could produce a mixed microstructure dominated by acicular ferrite. Results indicated that an increase in the cooling rate could improve the percentage of acicular ferrite in the final microstructure under the present experimental conditions. Furthermore, the acicular ferrite dominated microstructure could be obtained by a two stage controlled rolling in the austenite recrystallisation region plus the non-recrystallisation region and controlled cooling at a cooling rate of 30 K s-1.