The thermodynamic analysis of TiN formation is in good agreement with the experimental results in this study where TiN clusters
occur in steel 3 and no TiN clusters are observed in steel 1. The preexisting TiN particles at high temperature in steel 3 are far more likely
to grow into lager TiN clusters. This implies that the precipitation
temperature is the decisive factor for the size of pre-existing TiN
particles, which proves the idea that TiN particles can easily agglomerate into large inclusions before solidification if the contents of
Ti and N in the molten steel are excessively high[25].Moreover,the
TiN particles tend to nucleate on the surface of Al2O3as the deoxidization product because of their small planar lattice disregistry and
the low nucleation energy, which suggests the TiN and Al2O3particles
can easily grow into larger clusters in molten steel