Effect of cold drawing on microstructure and corrosion performance of high-strength steel

This paper deals with the effect of cold drawing on a high-strength steel in wire form with pearlitic microstructure. Cold drawing produces a preferential orientation of the pearlite lamellae aligned parallel to the cold drawing direction, resulting in anisotropic properties with regard to fracture behaviour in air and aggressive environments (stress corrosion cracking). While the hot rolled bar has a randomly-oriented microstructure in both transverse and longitudinal sections, the fully-drawn wire presents a randomly-oriented appearance in the transverse cross section, but a marked orientation in the longitudinal cross section.