Deformation twinning in AISI 316L austenitic stainless steel: role of strain and strain path

AISI 316L austenitic stainless steel was deformed at different strain and strain paths. The twin boundaries in the deformed microstructure had two possible origins: decay of original annealing twins and generation of deformation twins. Assuming that rotations of grains, specifically grains on both sides of a twin boundary, are responsible for the twin decay, a simple model was proposed to bring out the domain of relative twin generation. A biaxial strain path, in general, was associated with strong twin generation - an association or dependency linked to the texture estimated values of Taylor factor. Formation of strain induced martensite was also observed to be strain and strain path dependent and was more in biaxial strain path.