1.

Introduction
The automotive market increasingly requires steels exhibiting tensile strength levels as high
as1200MPa, leading to reduction in car-weight, improvement in fuel-efficiency and crash-
resistance while remaining amenable to corrosion protective coating processes. Continuous
yielding, high work harden ingrate and relatively high formability are some of the essential
properties for many automotive applications. Conventionally, to produce high strength steels,
alloying additions are carried out to impart solid solution strengthening and grain refinement
followed by annealing treatment to improve formability. This leads to higher production costs
and reduced weldability. As compared to the conventional annealing processes (carried out in
Batch or Continuous Annealing Lines) which deploy low to moderate heating and cooling
rates, Rapid Transformation Annealing (RTA) is characterized by rapid heating of cold-rolled
steels above Ac1, with heating rates in the range of 200-1100°C/s, followed by short-holding
(0-60 s) and thereafter rapid quenching (cooling rate> 100°C/s). High heating rate causes
interaction between phase transformation and recrystallization and high cooling rate causes
more nucleation over growth to achieve grain refinement which results in superior strength
levels as compared to conventional annealing route. A number of studies have been
conducted on different steel grades like plain low carbon, micro alloyed, dual phase, AHSS
etc. However, comparative assessment of CA (using Continuous Annealing Line) with RTA
has not been undertaken comprehensively. At JSW, different automotive steel grades are
produced with wide range of mechanical properties. RTA offers a novel approach which can
be deployed to improve mechanical properties of the available grades with leaner alloy
design to achieve superior properties at lower production costs.

2. Literature Review
Conventional annealing has been used traditionally to achieve desired properties such as high
strength, good toughness, better solid solution strengthening, hardness, finer precipitates,
recrystallization, etc.

These
Chemical Composition
IF Steel:

Elements C Mn S P Si Al Cr Cu Nb Ti

Percentage 0.003 0.14 0.01 0.022 0.005 0.038 0.017 0.006 0.015 0.034

HSLA Steel:

Elements C Mn S P Si Al Cr Cu Nb V Ti

Percentage 0.093 1.56 0.0026 0.028 0.269 0.049 0.026 0.008 0.024 0.051 0.017

Fig: Optical Micrograph of IF steel etched with Nital (0.2% HNO3) 500X.
Fig: SEM Micrograph of IF steel etched with Nital (0.2% HNO3) .

Ferrite

Pearlite

Fig: Optical Micrograph of HSLA steel etched with Nital (0.2% HNO3) 1000X.
Fig: SEM Micrograph of HSLA steel etched with Nital (0.2% HNO3) 2000X.