Tensile Deformation Induced Texture Transformation in Austenitic Stainless Steel

Abstract

Texture patterns of the starting ώ and transformed α structural phases were obtained from AISI 304 stainless steel sheets subjected to varying levels of tensile deformation using high energy X-ray diffraction in combination with the texture enhanced Rietveld method. The use of this method allows the simultaneous determination of the orientation distribution functions (ODF) of both phases, even for small α-martensite fractions of the order of 5%. The texture patterns are analyzed in terms of the crystallographic orientation relation between the starting and transformed phases and the preferential formation of certain variants of this relation.