page_title: Bainite
section_title: Applications
hierarchical_section_title: Bainite / Applications
caption_attribution_description: Bainite-rich steel shafts produced by Rolls Royce Plc
context_page_description: Bainite is a plate-like microstructure that forms in steels at temperatures of 125–550 °C. First described by E. S. Davenport and Edgar Bain, it is one of the products that may form when austenite is cooled past a temperature where it no longer is thermodynamically stable with respect to ferrite, cementite, or ferrite and cementite. Davenport and Bain originally described the microstructure as being similar in appearance to tempered martensite.
  A fine non-lamellar structure, bainite commonly consists of cementite and dislocation-rich ferrite. The large density of dislocations in the ferrite present in bainite, and the fine size of the bainite platelets, makes this ferrite harder than it normally would be.
  The temperature range for transformation of austenite to bainite is between those for pearlite and martensite. In fact, there is no fundamental lower limit to the bainite-start temperature. When formed during continuous cooling, the cooling rate to form bainite is more rapid than that required to form pearlite, but less rapid than is required to form martensite. Most alloying elements will retard the formation of bainite, though carbon is the most effective in doing so.
context_section_description: With increasing bainite content in steel, the hardness, yield and tensile strength remain almost constant for bainite content up to 50%, and then increase by ca. 30%. Hence meter-size shafts and plates of high-bainite steels have been commercially mass-produced by Rolls-Royce Holdings and Tata Steel.
caption: Bainite-rich steel shafts
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