Kinetics of Austenite Decomposition

Our group utilized controlled-decarburization conditions to study the kinetics of ferrite growth into austenite for a wide range of ternary Fe-C-X alloys and over a wide temperature range.  The new technique provided very accurate kinetics which could not be obtained using any of the traditional techniques.  A series of important papers on the effect of alloying elements on the kinetics of austenite decomposition has been published.  This effort culminated with the development of a generalized model for ferrite growth which successfully describes the kinetics of planar ferrite growth in eight ternary alloy systems of the type Fe-C-X and several quaternary Fe-C-Mn-Y alloys.  The most important feature of the model is that it captures the transition from ParaEquilibrium (PE) conditions to Local-Equilbrium with No-Partitioning (LENP) and incorporates the effect of solute drag.  This led to several international collaborations (Monash University, Tohoku University, TU Delft).  The emphasis of recent collaborations has been the characterization (APT, EELS) of solute segregation and solute interactions at the ferrite/austenite interface.  A great resource on this topic is the Alemi Group:  www.alemi.ca