LAUSR

Abstract This work aims at broadening water quenching window for production of hot rolled quenched and partitioned (Q&P) steels. Comparing with conventional researches, a low density steel 0.25C–3Mn–2Al (wt%) was designed to increase the amount of retained austenite (RA) through quenching and non-isothermal partitioning processes. The results indicated that stable amount of RA greater than 19.3% was obtained in the quenching temperature range of ∼280–360 °C, resulting in excellent plasticity ∼19.2–20.5% in combination with high tensile strength of ∼1091–1196 MPa. The isothermal transformation was responsible for the stable amount of RA and the CCE model combining with isothermal transformation was used to quantitatively calculate RA.