Promoting the coalescence of bainite platelets

An experiment is presented which succeeds for the first time in stimulating the formation of coarse plates of bainite by the coalescence of identically oriented individual platelets. Transformation under the influence of a tensile stress dramatically promotes the formation of the coalesced bainite by increasing the probability of growing parallel platelets in close proximity. Whereas the coarse plates are detrimental to toughness, the result serves to validate the mechanism of coalescence, which has been discussed extensively in the literature. (C) 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.