Effect of magnetic field on interfacial energy and precipitation behavior of carbides in reduced activation steels

This work investigated the influence of high temperature and high magnetic field on the carbide precipitation behavior in reduced activation steels. As-quenched steels are tempered at 923 K for 3 h with and without a 10 T magnetic field. The applied field can effectively prevent the directional growth of rod-shaped M 23C 6 carbides along martensite packet boundaries. The aspect ratio of M 23C 6 carbides decreased from 2.3 to 1.2 due to an increase of the carbide/ferrite interfacial energy under the high magnetic field. Applications of the Weiss molecular field theory to calculate the difference in interfacial energy caused by the high magnetic field, and of the Langer–Schwartz theory to model metal carbide (MC) precipitation behavior under the magnetic field were described. Results indicated that the density of MC decreased by nearly an order of magnitude and its mean size increased by 40% owing to an increase of 0.03 J/m 2 of the carbide/ferrite interfacial energy.