CALPHAD-based alloy design for advanced automotive steels - Part I: Development of bearing steels with enhanced strength and optimized microstructure

Alloy design is of prime importance for automotive steels to achieve desired properties, such as strength, hardenability and wear resistance. In the present study, CALPHAD-based computational techniques have been successfully utilized to develop advanced steels for automotive applications. The first part of this series describes an integrated computational approach for the compositional modification of bearing steels. A conventional 100CrMn6 bearing steel has been precisely redesigned to achieve strength enhancement with optimized cementite size distribution. The strength of the modified bearing steel was further improved by the addition of 0.2wt% V using fine vanadium carbide precipitates. Experimental verification of the calculated results confirmed the reliability of the computational method employed in this study.