Use of Fe-C Information as Reference for Alloying Effects on BS

Many empirical equations of the variation of the critical temperature with alloy content of the start of bainite formation in steels are available. They are often obtained by regression analysis of measured values for a large number of alloyed steels, usually with several alloying elements. However, such equations differ considerably, especially when applied to pure Fe-C alloys, which results in large differences between reported effects of individual alloying elements since they have not been based on the Fe-C system as a reference. Apparently, for the first time, an empirical equation is now derived by starting with information from Fe-C alloys and low alloy steels and then adding the effect of each alloying element separately, using information from ternary Fe-C-M alloys. Sets of information from the same alloy content but different carbon contents proved particularly useful. Lines connecting such points are regarded as B-S lines for the respective alloy content and the effect of alloying elements was evaluated from their distance from the B-S line for Fe-C alloys. Only under this condition can coefficients for alloying elements be expected to represent the physical effect of the elements. The resulting equation was tested with about 600 experimental B-S temperatures.