This study deals with the yielding behavior and strain aging properties of three bake hardening steels with dualphase microstructure, fabricated by varying the annealing temperature. Bake hardening and aging tests are performed to examine the correlation of martensite volume fraction with yielding behavior and strain aging properties of the bake hardening steels with dual-phase microstructure. The volume fraction of martensite increases with increasing annealing temperature. Roomtemperature tensile test results show that the yielding behavior changes from discontinuous-type to continuous-type with increasing volume fraction of martensite due to higher mobile dislocation density. According to the bake hardening and aging tests, the specimen with the highest fraction of martensite exhibited high bake hardening with low aging index because solute carbon atoms in ferrite and martensite effectively diffuse to dislocations during the bake hardening test, while in the aging test they diffuse at only ferrite due to lower aging temperature.

This study deals with the effect of microstructure factors on the strain aging properties of API X70 pipeline steels with different microstructure fractions and grain sizes. The grain size and microstructure fraction of the API pipeline steels are analyzed by optical and scanning electron microscopy and electron backscatter diffraction analysis. Tensile tests before and after 1% pre-strain and thermal aging treatment are conducted to simulate pipe forming and coating processes. All the steels are composed mostly of polygonal ferrite, acicular ferrite, granular bainite, and bainitic ferrite. After 1% pre-strain and thermal aging treatment, the tensile test results reveal that yield strength, tensile strength and yield ratio increase, while uniform elongation decreases with an increasing thermal aging temperature. The increment of yield and tensile strengths are affected by the fraction of bainitic ferrite with high dislocation density because the mobility of dislocations is inhibited by interaction between interstitial atoms and dislocations in bainitic ferrite. On the other hand, the variation of yield ratio and uniform elongation is the smallest in the steel with the largest grain size because of the decrease in the grain boundary area for dislocation pile-ups and the presence of many dislocations inside large grains after 1% pre-strain.

The effect of strain aging on the tensile properties of API X70 linepipe steel was investigated in this study. The API X70 linepipe steel was fabricated by controlled rolling and accelerated cooling processes, and the microstructure was analyzed using optical and scanning electron microscopes and electron backscatter diffraction. Strain aging tests consisting of 1% pre-strain and thermal aging at 200 oC and 250 oC were conducted to simulate U-forming, O-forming, Expansion(UOE) pipe forming and anti-corrosion coating processes. The API X70 linepipe steel was composed of polygonal ferrite, acicular ferrite, granular bainite, and bainitic ferrite whose volume fraction was dependent on the chemical composition and process conditions. As the thermal aging temperature increased, the steel specimens showed more clearly discontinuous type yielding behavior in the tensile stress-strain curve due to the formation of a Cottrell atmosphere. After pre-strain and thermal aging, the yield and tensile strengths increased and the yield-to-tensile strength ratio decreased because yielding and aging behaviors significantly affected work hardening. On the other hand, uniform and total elongations decreased after pre-strain and thermal aging since dislocation gliding was restricted by increased dislocation density after a 1% pre-strain.

In the present study, the tensile properties and dynamic strain aging of an Fe-24.5Mn-4Cr-0.45C alloy were investigated in terms of strain rate. During tensile testing at room temperature, all the stress-strain curves exhibited serrated plastic flows related to dynamic strain aging, regardless of the strain rate. Serration appeared right after yield stress at lower strain rates, while it was hardly observed at high strain rates. On the other hand, strain-rate sensitivity, indicating a general relationship between flow stress and strain rate at constant strain and temperature, changed from positive to negative as the strain increased. The negative strain-rate sensitivity can be explained by the Portevin Le Chatelier effect, which is associated with dynamic strain aging and is dependent on the strain rate because it is very likely that the dynamic strain aging phenomenon in high-manganese steels is involved in the interaction between moving dislocations and point-defect complexes.