Kinetics of α-γ Phase Transition of Fe-12Cr-4Ni Alloy Aged between 500-650 deg. C

Using Moessbauer spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction as analytical tools, an 'anomalous' α-γ phase transformation observed previously in steels was studied. It was shown in this work that this phase transformation is a feature of the Fe-12Cr-4Ni ternary alloy, and the ageing-time dependence of the γ-phase formation follows Avrami kinetics representing a diffusion controlled process. The activation energy of the process was also determined. The equilibrium composition of the samples could be interpreted in terms of calculated phase diagrams of the Fe-Cr-Ni system. On the basis of the hyperfine-field distributions derived from the spectra it was shown that two processes take place in the ferromagnetic α-phase during the ageing at different rates in which the slower one is in accordance with a decrease of the chromium concentration in the α-phase owing to the γ-phase formation