Preparation of Polished Sections and Determination of the Phase Composition of Highly Metastable TRIP Steel by Microscopic and Radiographic Methods

Abstract

Abstract High alloy TRIP steels offer an excellent combination of strength and formability. The pronounced metastability of the γ austenite present in the material in its unstressed condition places high demands on the metallographic preparation of the section as it must ensure a low level of transformation, i. e. a low level of deformation. In addition, these steels contain phases with an identical lattice structure, i. e. the differentiation of the phases is made considerably more difficult when established methods for the phase analysis such as EBSD and XRD are used. In this work, a methodology for a preparation of polished sections offering a low level of transformation is developed and compared to conventional preparation methods. In this context, various phase analysis methods are compared. In addition, a possibility for a quantitative phase analysis of these multi-phase materials by combination of microscopic and radiographic methods is presented.