| Abstract: | Ultra-high strength high-carbon wire rod steels have been produced using vanadium-microalloying technique instead of the conventional expensive and environment polluting lead patenting treatment. The strength increment attained in the hot rolled steels due to vanadium additions is maintained in the cold drawn wire. By using this technique, high tensile strength levels of 1550-1600 N/mm2 were attained either by cold drawing of 0.17% V microalloyed high-carbon steel to 45-47% reduction or by cold drawing of 0.20% V microalloyed high-carbon steel to 25-30% reduction. An equation has been developed to predict the tensile strength from the chemical composition, cooling rate and reduction of area due to cold drawing. A combination of vanadium microalloying and accelerated cooling resulted in additional strength increment due to refining of microstructure and increasing the precipitation strengthening component. Inspite of the decrease in the amount of vanadium precipitates due to the increase in cooling rate, it is suggested that an increase in precipitation strengthening due to refining of these precipitates by accelerated cooling more than offsets the loss of precipitation strengthening due to decreasing the precipitates fraction. |
