Effect of Cu Content on Precipitation During Continuous Cooling

The precipitation behavior of Cu-bearing steels during continuous cooling was investigated. Microstructure of ferrite was obtained by using 1℃/s cooling rates and interrupted cooling. The optical microscope and TEM were used to study the effect of different Cu content on the precipitation process. The results show that when the steels was cooled at 1℃/s, the second-phase precipitates occurs in the steels which Cu content is higher than 1.5%. However there are no obvious precipitates in the steels which Cu content is lower than 1%. The second-phase precipitates are copper-rich particles in the way of phase precipitation.