Alloy carbides are of considerable importance in the design of steels resistant to creep deformation during service at elevated temperatures. Their formation in ternary or higher order steels involves the diffusion of both substitutional and interstitial solutes. Because these solutes diffuse at vastly different rates, there are difficulties in adopting the theory of diffusion-controlled growth in binary alloys. The present work presents a method, developed in the context of molybdenum carbide precipitation in steels, for the modelling of growth with local equilibrium at the interface whilst at the same time accounting for capillarity effects. The theory is tested against published experimental data.
Materials Science and Technology, Vol. 15, 1999, 627-634.