Thermal and mechanical stability of retained austenite in 1%C bearing steels with varying Si contents

The present study is concerned with thermal and mechanical stability of retained austenite (RA) obtained in high-carbon, high-silicon steels after quenching and tempering. Through the investigation of three different alloy compositions with Si content of ∼0.3, 0.6 and 1.2 wt-%, it is shown that increasing silicon dramatically increases thermal stability. Compression tests on quenched and tempered specimens indicate that RA was also mechanically more stable when present in higher silicon steels. This paper is part of a Themed Issue on Recent developments in bearing steels.