Type 316 steels have been heavily utilized as the structural material in many construction equipment and infrastructures. This paper reports the characterization of degradation in 316 austenitic stainless steel during the plastic deformation. The in-situ EBSD results revealed that, with the increase of plastic strain, the band contrast (BC) value progressively decreased in both grain and grain boundaries, and the target surface becomes uneven after the plastic tensile, which indicates that the increase of surface roughness. Meanwhile, the KAM and ρGND values are low in the origin specimen but increased significantly after the in-situ tensile. The results indicated that the KAM and ρGND are closely related to the deformation degree of the materials, which can be used as the indicator for assessing the degradation of 316 steel. Besides, the re-orientation of grain occurred after the tensile deformation, which can be recognized from the lattice orientation and local orientation maps.
