Effect of Overaging on Solute Distributions and Bake Hardening Phenomenon in Bake Hardening Steels

Specimens of two different kinds of bake hardening steels (BH-Mn and BH-P) were prepared and treated with different annealing processes (water quenching and overaging). A novel technique of three dimensional atom probe was used to investigate solute distributions in these steels. The results indicate that C concentration decreases, whereas V increases during overaging in both bake hardening steels. The conclusion that no vanadium carbides precipitate during the overaging is therefore originally obtained by microanalysis in bake hardening steels. Moreover, bake hardening values of all the specimens were tested by tensile experiments with 2% pre-deformation. However, those of overaged specimens were further measured with higher levels of pre-deformation because no bake hardening phenomenon was present at 2% pre-deformation. As the pre-deformation increases from 2% to 6% and 8%, both overaged steels show bake hardening values, and the value data are almost the same.