Heat Treatment Conditions of Low Carbon Steel Part Used in the Deep Sea

With increasing oil consumption, we have to find more oil resources in the deep sea. The extreme working condition of the deep sea requires high toughness and high strength values at low temperatures. Academic institutions limited the chemical composition of the requested casting steel to meet their requirements of fracture toughness and weldability. Thus, the carbon content was set approximately 0.10% based on classification societies which required specific mechanical properties of strength, elongation, reduction area and impact energy (−40°C). In this study, we find the optimal heat treatment condition of low carbon steel (0.10%C) to obtain the desired mechanical properties at low temperature (−40°C) according to different quenching parameters (heating times) and tempering parameters (heating temperatures, cooling methods).