Abstract : Ferrium® M54® exhibits an excellent UTS/K1C balance allowing its application in aeronautical structures. This
steel belongs to the Co-Ni UHS steels family with M2C nanometer-size carbide precipitation during tempering.
These steels provide very high strength with a very good fracture toughness thanks to the M2C fine precipitation
during tempering, but also because coarse particles are dissolved during austenitizing without grain coarsening.
The goal of this article is to identify the different carbide populations in M54®. A small addition of Ti in M54®
forms a Ti-rich MC carbide precipitation that is stable at high temperature. Consequently, during austenitization
at 1060 °C, all other types of coarse carbides are dissolved in the matrix without grain coarsening. As a very small
part of the initial carbon content is needed to form MC carbides, efficient and intensive nanometric M2C carbide
precipitation takes place during tempering, leading to very high final strength. Due to this double precipitation
of carbides in M54®, the steel achieves an outstanding UTS/K1C balance.
