Effect of heat treatment on microstructure and hardness of Eurofer 97, Eurofer ODS and T92 steels

Eurofer ODS steel is a potential candidate for fusion reactor application due to its excellent swelling resistance, low thermal expansion coefficient and high temperature properties. One of the main issues is that high fluence neutron irradiation induces a significant increase of ductile-to-brittle transition temperature (DBTT) at temperatures below 400 °C which restricts its application. The aim of this study is to explore the methods to lower the initial DBTT of Eurofer ODS steel by heat treatment optimization. Two heats of Eurofer ODS steels with different C contents are heat-treated at different normalizing temperatures, cooling rates and tempering conditions, and are compared with Eurofer 97 and T92 steels heat-treated with similar conditions. The microstructure is characterized by optical microscopy, FEG-TEM and OIM-EBSD techniques. The effect of normalization, cooling rate and temper on grain size, precipitation, grain boundary misorientation and hardness are investigated. The influences of these properties on DBTT are discussed.