Mechanism behind the Onset of Delamination in Wire-drawn Pearlitic Steels

Fully pearlitic steel was wire-drawn up to a strain of 2.2. Torsion tests were performed using two types of specimens—one was an as-drawn specimen, and the other was aged at 423 K for 3.6 ks. A delamination crack propagated along the longitudinal direction of the wire in the aged specimen, whereas normal fracture was exhibited perpendicular to the longitudinal direction in the as-drawn specimen during torsion tests. Backscattered electron images indicated that the cementite lamellae beneath the delamination crack had vanished, whereas, in the as-drawn specimen, the cementite lamellae beneath the normal fracture surface had rotated until the fracture. Torsion tests with different strain rates indicated an inverse strain-rate dependence of the onset of the delamination, suggesting that the plastic deformability of ferrite and existence of the thermally activated process that controls the cementite dissolution indicate the onset of the delamination. In the present study, the effect of aging and deformability of ferrite on delamination is discussed, suggesting that the delamination crack propagates as a result of the local plastic instability on the scale of several microns.