Evolution of Texture and Dislocation Distributions in High-ductile Austenitic Steel during Deformation

Fe-Mn-C austenitic steels exhibit outstanding high-ductile deformation in their plastic regions along with significant microstructural evolution. In this study, to characterize the microstructural evolution during deformation of these steels, line-profile and texture analyses were carried out using X-ray diffraction. The convolutional multiple whole profile fitting procedure was used for a line-profile analysis of 2– diffraction data to evaluate variations of crystallite size, dislocation density, and dislocation arrangement during tensile deformation. A substantial refinement of the crystallite size proceeded at an early deformation stage. In addition, the dipole character of dislocations was enhanced with an increase in the tensile strain. Texture evolution was characterized by the analysis of orientation distribution functions. Three texture components grew with an increase in the tensile strain. According to the pole figure describing the full width at half maximum distribution of the 220 reflection, the nontextured grains had more microstructural defects than the textured grains. To evaluate the microstructural defects in detail, the 220 reflection observed at each texture orientation was analyzed by the single-line profile method. The crystallite size and dislocation density were almost comparable, irrespective of the kind of texture component. The crystallite size of the nontextured grains was also comparable to that of the textured grains, whereas the nontextured grains had a dislocation density several times that of the textured grains. Based on these microstructural data, the origin of the mechanical properties of the Fe-Mn-C steel was discussed.