Theoretical and Experimental Nucleation and Growth of Precipitates in a Medium Carbon–Vanadium Steel

Using the general theory of nucleation, the nucleation period, critical radius, and growth of particles were determined for a medium carbon V-steel. Several parameters were calculated, which have allowed the plotting of nucleation critical time vs. temperature and precipitate critical radius vs. temperature. Meanwhile, an experimental study was performed and it was found that the growth of precipitates during precipitation obeys a quadratic growth equation and not a cubic coalescence equation. The experimentally determined growth rate coincides with the theoretically predicted growth rate.