Investigation of compositional change of inclusions in martensitic stainless steel during heat treatment by newly developed analysis method

The most important subject in the steelmaking process is the control of non-metallic inclusions. Nonmetallic inclusions with a high melting point do not deform during a hot working process because they are relatively hard. Hence, the inclusion composition should be controlled in order to achieve a low melting point to prevent product defects. Therefore, an MnO-SiO ₂-based inclusion is considered to be one of the preferred systems. Moreover, the heat treatment of austenitic stainless steel has been reported to influence the composition of MnO-SiO ₂-type inclusions; these inclusions change into MnO-Cr ₂O ₃-type, MnO-Nb ₂O ₅-type, and MnO-V ₂O ₃-type inclusions. In this study, we investigated the influence of heat treatment on the composition of the inclusions in the martensitic stainless steel. In general, a scanning electron microscope-energy dispersive x-ray spectrometer (SEM-EDS) is used for the quantitative analysis of inclusions; however, SEM-EDS cannot simultaneously analyze a large number of inclusions. Therefore, a new technique using the SEM-EDS along with the image analysis software "Particle Analysis" was used for the chemical analysis and the size measurement of a large number of inclusions (hereafter abbreviated as the PA method). The heat-treatment-induced compositional change of the inclusions in martensitic stainless steel was evaluated by using both the analysis methods.