Effects of short immersion time and cooling rates of copperizing process to the evolution of microstructures and copper behavior in the dead mild steel

In a dead mild steel with maximum carbon content of 0.15%, carbon does not contribute much to its strength. By adding copper as an alloying element, a balance between strength and ductility could be obtained through grain refining, solid solution, or Cu precipitation. This research aimed to analyse the changes in microstructures and copper behaviour on AISI 1006, including the phases formed, composition, and Cu dispersion. The addition of cooper was done by immersing steel into molten copper or so we called, copperizing using the principles of diffusion. Specimens were cut with 6 × 3 × 0.3 cm measurement then preheated to 900°C and melting the copper at 1100°C. Subsequently, the immersion of the specimens into molten copper varied to 5 and 7 minutes, and also varying the cooling rate to annealing, normalizing, and quenching. A series of test being conduct were optical microscope test, scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX), optical emission spectroscopy (OES), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results showed that the longer the immersion time and slower cooling rate, the more Cu diffused causing smaller grain size with the highest Cu diffused recorded was 0.277% in the copperized AISI 1006 steel with 7 minutes of immersion and was annealed. The grain size reduced to 23041.5404 μm². The annealed specimens show ferrite phase, the normalized ones show polygonal ferrite phase, while the quenched ones show granular bainite phase. The phase formed is single phase Cu. In addition, the normalized and quenched specimens show that Cu dissolved in Fe crystal forming solid solution.