MARTENSITIC TRANSFORMATIONS IN LASER PROCESSED COATINGS

This paper concentrates on laser coating of Fe-22 wt% Cr and a duplex steel SAF2205 by injecting Cr2O3 powder into the melt pool. In particular the work focuses on the stabilization of high temperature distorted spinel phases due to the high quench rates involved as well as on the a quantitative crystallographic analysis of the resulting morphologies. The microstructure observed in TEM indicates that the material does not solidify in the distorted spinel structure. The presence of a small amount of cubic (Fe, Cr)-spinel suggests that the distorted spinel in fact might be nucleated from the cubic spinel phase. The plate like morphology of the distorted spinel phase in combination with the twinned internal structure of the plates put forward the idea that the transformation might be martensitic. Martensitic calculations executed with the lattice parameters of the cubic and distorted (Fe, Cr)-spinel phases are in excellent agreement with the experimental data confirming that the transformation might be martensitic indeed.