Solute Effects on Growth Restriction in Dilute Ferrous Alloys

The effect of dilute solute additions on growth restriction in binary ferrous alloys has been assessed by means of the heuristic growth restriction parameter (β) modelling framework (Fan et al. in Acta Mater. 152, 248–257, 2018). The CALPHAD (CALculation of PHAse Diagrams) methodology (Kaufman and Bernstein in Computer Calculation of Phase Diagrams, 1970) has been used to calculate β values from the liquidus slope m and the equilibrium distribution coefficient k values, at first approximation, in conjunction with the liquid-to-solid fraction to obtain true β values. Critical solute concentrations, below which solidification becomes partitionless, have also been calculated. Among 23 dilute binary ferrous alloy systems investigated, the five most efficient solutes on grain refinement are B, Y, O, S and C. A negative correlation, or inverse relationship, was observed between the true β values and the grain size values obtained from a study on experimental multicomponent dilute ferrous alloy systems (Li et al. in Metall. Mater. Trans. A 49 A, 2235–2247, 2018).