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AFFECT OF DECARBURISATION TIMES OF BAINITIC FERRITE LATHS ON THE MICROSTRUCTURE IN Fe-Cr-C STEEL Zdzisław Ławrynowicz University of Technology and Life Sciences, Mechanical Engineering Faculty Department of Materials Science and Engineering av. Kaliskiego 7, 85-789 Bydgoszcz, Poland, e-mail: lawry@utp.edu.pl Abstract The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate how a thermodynamic method can be used for solving a problem of the decarburisation of bainite laths. Th e paper presents an investigation of the time required for the diffusion of carbon out of supersaturated laths of ferrite into the retained austenite. This should in principle enable to examine the partitioning of carbon from supersaturated ferrite laths into adjacent austenite and the carbon content in retained austenite using analytical method. The obtained results illustrates that the estimated times are not capable of decarburising the sheaf of ferrite included thick laths of bainitic ferrite during the period of austempering. A consequence of the precipitation of cementite from austenite during austempering is that the growth of bainitic ferrite can continue to larger extent and that the resulting microstructure is not an ausferrite but it is a mixture of bainitic ferrite, retained austenite and carbides. Keywords: carbon diffusion, decarburisation 1. Introduction The attractive properties of carbide free bainitic steel are related to its unique microstructure that consists of ferrite and high carbon austenite. Because of this microstructure, the product of austempering reaction is often referred to as “ausferrite” rather than bainite [4,6,13]. If bainite is formed by a shear mechanism it i