Elemental partitioning as a route to decrease HAZ hardness

In the present study, in order to find out a valuable method to decrease the hardness of heat-affected zone (HAZ), elemental partitioning was introduced before welding simula-tion to realize elemental redistribution. The results demonstrate that about 10% reduction of HAZ hardness can be achieved by introduction of elemental partitioning. During elemental partitioning, the content of retained austenite increases with increasing of elemental partitioned time. Further research reveals that the value of geometrically necessary dislocation density decreases with elemental partitioning. It is found that the alloying elemental contents in the matrix after elemental partitioning are lower than that without elemental partitioning. In addition, the differences of grain size distribution and elemental distribution resulted in elemental partitioning are studied and compared to explain the reason for the reduction in hardness. (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).