High carbon microalloyed martensitic steel with ultrahigh strength-ductility

Based on the idea of rising the mechanical stability of retained austenite by the addition of Si in Fe-Mn based steels, an Fe-0.63C-1.52Mn-1.49Si-0.62Cr-0.036Nb was designed, then its hot rolled plate was successively tread by normalization process as pretreatment of novel quenching-partitioning-tempering (Q-P-T) process. Product of tensile and elongation (PSE) of 53.94 GPa% were obtained for this high carbon Q-P-T martensitic steel, and the PSE (40.18 GPa%) obtained by the conversion of tensile sample size using Oliver formula still is more excellent PSE than those of other microalloyed advanced high strength steels reported. The microstructural characterization reveals origin of ultrahigh PSE resulting from both the increase of considerable and dispersed carbon enriched retained austenite with relative high mechanical stability in volume fraction and the decrease of brittle twin-type martensite with the sensitivity of notch.