Advanced thermomechanical hot rolling is becoming a widely used technology for the production of fine-grained spring steel. Different rapid phase transformations during the inductive heat treatment of such steel causes the inhomogeneous mixture of martensitic, bainitic, and austenitic phases that affects the service properties of the steel. An important task is to assess the amount of retained austenite and its distribution over the cross-section of the inductive quenched and tempered wire in order to evaluate the mechanical properties of the material. Three different analytical methods were used for the comparative quantitative assessment of the amount of retained austenite in both the core and rim areas of the sample cross-section: neutron diffraction-for the bulk of the material, Mössbauer spectroscopy-for measurement in a surface layer, and the metallographic investigations carried by the EBSD. The methods confirmed the excessive amount of retained austenite in the core area that could negatively affect the plasticity of the material.

Department of Experimental Physics Faculty of Science Palacky University in Olomouc 17 Listopadu 12 77900 Olomouc Czech Republic

Department of Manufacturing Technology Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Brno University of Technology Technicka 2 61669 Brno Czech Republic

European Spallation Source ERIC Box 176 22100 Lund Sweden

Institute of Physics of Materials Czech Academy of Sciences Zizkova 22 61662 Brno Czech Republic

Nuclear Physics Institute of the CAS Řež 130 25068 Řež Czech Republic

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Special Issue: Mechanical Properties in Progressive Mechanically Processed Metallic Materials