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It is an important challenge to reduce the carbon content in nanostructured bainitic steels for commercialization purposes while still being able to gain the desired microstructural characteristics in nanoscale and not to deteriorate the strength–ductility combinations. That is the point at which an appropriate heat treatment procedure design would be an important parameter. This article aims to investigate how to obtain nanostructured bainite in steel with 0.26 wt% carbon content by applying multi-step austempering procedures. One-, two- and three-step austempering processes have been implemented, and proper heat treatment temperatures and approaches were selected based on dilatometry tests. Results indicated that it has become possible to achieve bainitic ferrites and austenite films with overall thicknesses of 164, 145 and 132 nm and 134, 105 and 90 nm at the end of one-, two- and three-step austempering heat treatments, respectively. Meanwhile, microstructural characteristics resulted in enhanced mechanical properties with ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of 1435, 1455 and 1428 MPa in combination with elongation levels of 15.4, 13.6 and 11.4% after implementing those heat treatments. Finally, it has been shown that applying the multi-step austempering heat treatments resulted in enhanced yield strength and impact toughness values due to the microstructural characteristics and proper heat treatment procedure design.

Extremely valuable mechanical properties in combination with acceptable wear resistance can make nanostructural bainitic steels to be used extensively in different engineering and tribological applications. However, it is critical to characterize the contributed factors to investigate the wear response of these high-strength materials. This work aims to study the wear behavior of two nanostructural bainitic steels with different amount of austenite stabilizer elements Mn and Ni. For this purpose, wear resistances of the materials were evaluated using the pin-on-disk method. The results indicated that the hardness of the sample is a critical factor affecting the tribological behavior, and the volume fraction and morphology of high-carbon retained austenite are also of considerable importance. It has also been demonstrated that transformation-induced plasticity effect during the wear test and oxide formation at worn surfaces are critical factors.

The aim of this work is to investigate the fatigue behavior of a new class of nanostructured, low-temperature bainitic steels, where rotating bending fatigue tests were conducted on samples isothermally transformed at 300, 250, and 200 °C, after which, fracture surfaces were examined using scanning electron microscopy. Results showed that, fatigue limits of about 820, 945, and 1,005 MPa were achieved for the samples transformed at each transformation temperature, respectively. Moreover, according to the SEM micrographs, secondary crack initiation was observed in the high carbon retained austenite blocks for samples transformed at 300 °C and at the interface of blocky austenite-bainitic ferrite for samples transformed at 250 and 200 °C.