A study of diffusion- and interface-controlled migration of the austenite/ferrite front during austenitization of a case-hardenable alloy steel

Migrating austenite/ferrite interfaces in the ferrite regions of an alloy steel, containing 0.20 wt pct C, 0.87 wt pct Mn, and 0.57 wt pct Cr, with a ferrite/pearlite microstructure have been observed during austenitization by a high-temperature confocal scanning laser microscope in order to determine the mechanisms of transformation. The samples were subjected to isothermal (790 °C to 850 °C) and nonisothermal (0.5 °C to 20 °C/s) temperature profiles. The kinetic rates extracted from the observations were compared to models for long-range diffusion-controlled and interface reaction-controlled migration. The transition between the two mechanisms was found to occur at T₀, which defines the temperature and composition at which a partitionless phase transformation is possible. Occurrence of the partitionless, interface-controlled transformation was confirmed by an analysis of carbon distribution and microstructure before and after a sample was subjected to a particular thermal profile. The mobility of such interfaces was found to be in the range 1.6 ·10^-13 to 2 ·10^-12 m⁴·J^-1 ·s^-1, which is consistent with previous studies on interface-controlled migration of the reverse reaction, α to γ, during cooling of dilute substitutional iron alloys. The diffusion-controlled migration, at temperatures below T₀, was found to occur in two stages: an initial stage, at which the growth rate can be predicted by a semi-infinite diffusion model; and a second stage, at which the growth slows more rapidly, possibly due to the overlap of diffusion fields.