Rapid Spheroidizing Annealing via Combining Warm Deformation with Divorced Eutectoid Transformation in M50 Steel

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

 

thank you very much for this well written and clear report on a technologically important subject.

 

There are very few comments or recommendations; most only concern formal aspects or clarifications:

 

Some numbers are given with exaggerated accuracy: e.g. temperatures or Vickers hardness with 2 decimal places; the specification of the volume fraction with 3 decimal places in line 189 is particularly extreme. It is recommended to specify whole numbers in each case.

 

Sample preparation is somewhat unclear. Although vacuum remelting is specified, how did the casting process and further processing take place? How is the initial material status defined in line 199. Are the primary carbides already precipitated during casting? What is the origin of voids, mentioned in Figure 7.

 

Please define how you determine “roundness” and what the figures for roundness indicate.

 

Figure 10: please mention the deformation temperature in the caption or use this info instead of the sample declaration S5 … S7.  

 

Some expressions are not used grammatically correct:

Line 97 – accuracy temperature range? Accurate temperature range?

Line  324 – no obvious differences in number?

Line 326 – maximum density? Maximum orientation density?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In this paper, a novel routine to perform a rapid spheroidizing annealing process in M50 steel has been designed. The study and the results obtained are quite interesting from a scientific point of view, but some aspects must be clarified before their possible publication, thus a minor revision is proposed.

• It is suggested to introduce a section of nomenclature with a list of abbreviations (SA, WD, DET…).
• In the scale labels of Fig. 2 and in Figs. 17 and 18, the font size must be enlarged.
• What methods were used to measure roundness, diameter and aspect ratio?
• How many measurements were performed to obtain the results of roundness, diameter, aspect ratio…?
• The fraction of carbides in the samples subjected to the SA-CD, HD-SA and DET-WD processes should be indicated.
• What primary and secondary carbides appear in the samples?
• Have residual stresses been measured?
• In line 302, it says, “After SA, martensite is transformed into pearlite with low hardness.”. Wouldn't it be spherodite instead of pearlite?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf