The deformation structure and its contribution to strain hardening of a high manganese austenitic steel were investigated after tensile deformation at 298 K, 77 K and 4 K by means of electron backscatter diffraction and transmission electron microscopy, exhibiting a strong dependence of strain hardening and deformation structure on deformation temperature. It was demonstrated that sufficient twinning indeed provides a high and stable strain hardening capacity, leading to a simultaneous increase in strength and ductility at 77 K compared with the tensile deformation at 298 K. Moreover, although the SFE of the steel is ~34.4 mJ/m2 at 4 K, sufficient twinning was not observed, indicating that the mechanical twinning is hard to activate at 4 K. However, numerous planar dislocation arrays and microbands can be observed, and these substructures may be a reason for multi-peak strain hardening behaviors at 4 K. They can also provide certain strain hardening capacity, and a relatively high total elongation of ~48% can be obtained at 4 K. In addition, it was found that the yield strength (YS) and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) linearly increases with the lowering of the deformation temperature from 298 K to 4 K, and the increment in YS and UTS was estimated to be 2.13 and 2.43 MPa per 1 K reduction, respectively.
On the effect of deformation twinning and microstructure to strain hardening of high manganese austenitic steel 3D microstructure aggregates at large strains
