Calculating Retained Austenite in Steel Post Magnetic Processing Using X-Ray Diffraction

During the summer of 2006, I had the opportunity to participate in an internship through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). ORNL is the nations largest national laboratory that is funded by the DOE. ORNL is known best for developing the technology for the atomic bomb and was a classified area for many years. Today ORNL’s research spans all areas of science from robotics and particle accelerators, to material science and hybrid lighting systems. I worked in the Materials Science and Technology Division with the Diffraction and Thermophysical Properties Group and was assigned to work on two projects under Dr. Thomas Watkins. The first project was to alter code for a residual stress program to accept new data files and the second was to calculate retained austenite in steel. I spent the majority of my time collecting and calculating data on sample of steel using x-ray diffraction. To understand the process of calculating retained austenite using x-ray diffraction, we must first know what austenite and x-ray diffraction are.