Microstructural and corrosion characteristics of Quenched and Self-Tempered (QST) steel reinforcing bars

Quenched and Self-Tempered (QST) steel reinforcing bar (rebar, herein) is widely used in the reinforced concrete (RC) systems across the world. A typical QST steel rebar cross-section consists of a ductile ‘ferrite-pearlite’ (FP) core and a hard ‘tempered-martensite’ (TM) periphery. A good quality QST steel rebar is expected to have an FP core encircled by a uniformly thick, continuous, and concentric TM ring/phase. This study assessed the...