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Transgranular Cracking in a Liquid Zn Embrittled High Strength Steel

Published

Author(s)

Diptak Bhattacharya, Lawrence Cho, Ellen Van der Aa, Hassan Ghassemi-Armaki, Andreas Pichler, Kip O. Findley, John G. Speer

Abstract

Intergranular Zn-assisted liquid metal embrittlement (LME) cracks have been frequently reported in steels, involving austenite grain boundary penetration of liquid Zn at high temperature. In the present study, a Zn-coated high strength steel was deformed at an intercritical temperature; and the characteristics of LME cracking were studied in a mixed microstructure composed of ferrite and austenite at the deformation temperature. Crack propagation was intergranular in austenite; in contrast, the ferrite exhibited both intergranular LME and "transgranular" LME. Trace analysis of the crack orientation was consistent with cracking along 100} cleavage planes.
Citation
Scripta Materialia
Volume
175

Keywords

Liquid metal embrittlement, high strength steel, Zn, intercritical, ferrite, transgranular cracking

Citation

Bhattacharya, D. , Cho, L. , Van der Aa, E. , Ghassemi-Armaki, H. , Pichler, A. , Findley, K. and Speer, J. (2020), Transgranular Cracking in a Liquid Zn Embrittled High Strength Steel, Scripta Materialia, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scriptamat.2019.09.006, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=928394 (Accessed October 10, 2025)

Issues

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Created January 14, 2020, Updated October 12, 2021
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