An experimental investigation of the austenitization under continuous heating of various microstructures of 8 industrial steel grades with wide range of chemical compositions was carried out. A quantitative mathematical model describing the austenitization kinetics of the steels with complex microstructure and predicting austenite grain size in dependence on the chemical composition, volume fractions of structural components (ferrite, pearlite, bainite, martensite), ferrite grain size and heating rate, was developed. Values of the model empirical parameters were...