Influence of annealing treatment on the formation of nano/submicron grain size AISI 301 austenitic stainless steels

Nano/submicron austenitic stainless steels have attracted increasing attention over the past few years due to fine structural control for tailoring engineering properties. At the nano/submicron grain scales, grain boundary strengthening can be significant, while ductility remains attractive. To achieve a nano/submicron grain size, metastable austenitic stainless steels are heavily cold-worked, and annealed to convert the deformation-induced martensite formed during cold rolling into austenite. The amount of reverted austenite is a function of annealing temperature. In this work, an AISI 301 metastable austenitic stainless steel is 90 pet cold-rolled and subsequently annealed at temperatures varying from 600 degrees C to 900 degrees C for a dwelling time of 30 minutes. The effects of annealing on the microstructure, average austenite grain size, marten site-to-austenite ratio, and carbide formation are determined. Analysis of the as-cold-rolled microstructure reveals that a 90 pet cold reduction produces a combination of lath type and dislocation cell-type martensitic structure. For the annealed samples, the average austenite grain size increases from 0.28 Am at 600 degrees C to 5.85 mu m at 900 degrees C. On the other hand, the amount of reverted austenite exhibits a maximum at 750 degrees C, where austenite grains with an average grain size of 1.7 mu m compose approximately 95 pet of the microstructure. Annealing temperatures above 750 degrees C show an increase in the amount of martensite. Upon annealing, (Fe, Cr, MO)(23)C-6 carbides form within the grains and at the grain boundaries.