Effect of Temperature on Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Fe-9Ni-2Cu Steel during the Tempering Process

In this paper, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray stress meter (XRSA), atom probe tomography (APT), hardness, and tensile tests were used to study the effect of tempering temperature on the microstructure and properties of Fe-9Ni-2Cu steel. The results show that after the quenched samples were tempered at 460 °C for 2 h, the hardness values increased from 373 to 397 HV, and elongation also increased from 13% to 16%. With the tempering temperature increasing from 460 to 660 °C, the hardness firstly decreases from 397 to 353 HV and then increases to 377 HV, while the elongation increases to 17% and then decreases to 11%. The variation of the mechanical properties greatly depends on the evolution of the Cu-rich phase and carbides. The precipitation strengthening of the Cu-rich phase and carbides leads to the increase of hardness, but when the precipitate is coarsened, the precipitation strengthening weakens, and then, the hardness increases. When the tempering temperature is 560 °C, a large amount of stable reverse transformation austenite was formed with a content of 7.1%, while the tensile strength reached the lowest value of 1022 MPa and the elongation reached the maximum value of 17%.