Deformation behavior of ferrite-austenite duplex lightweight Fe-Mn-Al-C steel

The deformation behavior of a duplex lightweight Fe-Mn-Al-C steel having a bimodal structure consisting of clustered austenite particles with a coarse ferrite matrix has been investigated. It shows that most of the deformation is accommodated by the ferrite, while the clustered austenite particles undergo a deformation-induced martensitic transformation, resulting in a good combination of tensile properties. However, some of the austenite particles do not transform to martensite upon deformation, due to their unfavorable orientations to the loading direction, i.e. small Schmid factors. (C) 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.