Precipitates in Nb and Nb-V microalloyed X80 pipeline steel.

Precipitates in two X80 pipeline steels were studied by transmission electron microscopy equipped with an energy filtering system. The steels are microalloyed with niobium and niobium-vanadium (Nb-V), respectively, and produced by continuous hot rolling. Besides the precipitates TiN and (Ti, Nb) (C, N), which were 10-100 nm in size, a large number of precipitates smaller than 10 nm distributed in the two steels have been observed. In the Nb-V microalloyed steel, only a few titanium nitrides covered by vanadium compounds on the surface have been observed. It is inferred that the vanadium exists mainly in the matrix as a solid solution element. The fact has been accepted that there was no contribution to the precipitation strengthening of the X80 steel by adding 0.04-0.06% vanadium under the present production process. By contrast, the toughness of the Nb-V steel is deteriorated. Therefore, a better toughness property of the Nb microalloyed X80 results from the optimum microalloying composition design and the suitable accelerating cooling after hot rolling.