A New XRD Method to Quantify Plate and Lath Martensites of Hardened Medium-Carbon Steel

This paper introduces a new technique to separately measure the volume fraction and tetragonal ratio of co-existing lath and plate martensites in ultrahigh strength steel, and to calculate their different carbon contents. First, the two martensites are assumed to have body-centered tetragonal lattice structures of different tetragonal ratios. X-ray diffraction is then applied to obtain the overlapping {200} diffraction peak, which is subsequently separated as four sub-peaks using a self-made multiple Gaussian peak-fitting method to allow the measurement of the individual lattice parameters c and a . Finally, a modified equation is applied to calculate the carbon contents from the obtained tetragonal ratios. The new technique is then applied to investigate the effect of subsequent tempering on the decarbonization of the as-quenched martensites.