Revisit of bake hardening mechanism: Influence of baking on tensile properties of press hardening steels

Paint baking is a process in automotive industries to accelerate the curing of paint and increase yield strength of steel panel for improving the dent resistance due to the formation of well-known Cottrell's atmosphere. However, our careful study on bake hardening mechanism of three press hardening steels (PHS) indicates a different explanation. We developed two novel Nb/Si alloyed steels with superior tensile properties when compared with the commercial grade of 22MnB5. It was found that the paint baking at 170 °C led to the significant increase of yield strength but the decreases of both uniform and total elongation for all the three PHSs. According to the neutron diffraction results, both the baking and the tensile straining until the elastic-plastic transition strain (εep) led to the decrease of full width at half maximum (FWHM), indicating that both should release the residual stress (RS) that was generated during martensite transformation; whilst the internal friction examinations reveal no presence of Snoke peak and no influence of the baking on Snoek-Kê-Köster peak. Based on these results, the kinetics simulation on forming Cottrell's atmosphere and the relevant microstructural characterization results, we can safely conclude that the strengthening caused by the baking is not ascribed to the change of Cottrell atmosphere, carbide precipitates or retained austenite (RA) grains during the baking although commonly believed, but just due to the release of RS. Moreover, the relaxation of compressive RS in martensite and the transformation of RA grains to martensite are the main contributor to the strain hardening of invented PHSs before εep. Therefore, the baking treatment decreases both strain hardening capability and ductility of studied PHSs due to the release of the RS.