Description of short time phase transformations during the heating of steels based on high-rate experimental data

During surface hardening of steels like laser hardening, rapid thermal changes are imposed to the material. The modelling of these hardening processes allows the determination of time-dependent temperature fields and phase transformations within the affected zones. While there are many investigations on the transformation behaviour during cooling, there is a lack of data concerning the transformation during heating at very high heating rates. Therefore, experiments simulating the fast temperature changes are necessary to implement the effects of short time phase transformation during hardening into Simulation. In this paper the effect of heating rates tip to 10000 K/s oil the austenitizing behaviour of the steel AISI 4140 (German grade 42CrMo4) are presented and described using an Avrami-function. The results obtained are summarized in time-temperature-transformation diagrams for continuous heating and isothermal time-temperature-transformation diagrams which may be used as input data for the simulation.