The Precipitation Law of Cu Particles in Cu-Containing Ferritic Steel

Regarding the precipitation behavior of Cu particles in steel, conventional studies have primarily focused on isothermal precipitation, which has limitations in characterizing precipitation kinetics under variable temperature conditions. For this purpose, in the present study, the Fe-3%Si-Cu alloy was selected as a model system to systematically investigate the regulation of Cu particle precipitation behavior and associated strengthening effects in a ferrite matrix during continuous heating-a process path that better aligns with practical conditions. The results indicate that, during the continuous heating process, an increase in the heating rate from 10 °C/h to 600 °C/h leads to a significant rise in the peak temperature, from 490.2 °C to 609.7 °C, while the time required to reach the peak temperature decreases substantially, from approximately 9.1 h to 19.6 min. Through TEM microstructure analysis and characterization, it is evident that rapid heating at 500 °C/h significantly promotes the high-density nucleation of B2 and 9R-Cu metastable phases while effectively suppressing particle coarsening. This results in a finely dispersed nano-Cu precipitate phase with an average particle size of 8.21 nm and a number density of 30.35 × 10¹⁰ cm^-2. Under the rapid heating condition of 500 °C/h, the precipitation strengthening contribution of Cu particles reaches 501.86 MPa, significantly higher than the 451.02 MPa observed under the slow heating condition of 50 °C/h. This study, from the perspective of the coupling effect between thermodynamics (driven by undercooling) and kinetics (governed by diffusion), elucidates the kinetic behavior of Cu particle precipitation during continuous heating. It provides a novel fundamental and strengthening theory in the field of ferrite metallurgy for copper-enriched electrical steels and related engineering steels, offering significant insights for further understanding the role of copper in ferrite-based steels.