An inductive sensor developed by Philips ATC has been used to study in-situ the austenite (γ) to martensite (α′) phase transformation kinetics during tensile testing in an AISI 301 austenitic stainless steel. A correlation between the sensor output signal and the volume fraction of α′-martensite has been found by comparing the results to the ex-situ characterization by magnetization measurements, light optical microscopy, and X-ray diffraction. The sensor has allowed for the observation of the stepwise transformation behavior, a not-well-understood phenomena that takes place in large regions of the bulk material and that so far had only been observed by synchrotron X-ray diffraction.

Austenitic Stainless Steels and High-Strength Low-Alloy (HSLA) steels show significant dynamic recovery and dynamic recrystallization (DRX) during hot forming. In order to design optimal and safe hot-formed products, a good understanding and constitutive description of the material behavior is vital. A new continuum model is presented and validated on a wide range of deformation conditions including high strain rate deformation. The model is presented in rate form to allow for the prediction of material behavior in transient process conditions. The proposed model is capable of accurately describing the stress–strain behavior of AISI 316LN in hot forming conditions, also the high strain rate DRX-induced softening observed during hot torsion of HSLA is accurately predicted. It is shown that the increase in recrystallization rate at high strain rates observed in experiments can be captured by including the elastic energy due to the dynamic stress in the driving pressure for recrystallization. Furthermore, the predicted resulting grain sizes follow the power-law dependence with steady state stress that is often reported in literature and the evolution during hot deformation shows the expected trend.

Hot compression test data taken from Zhang [1] of metastable austenitic stainless steel AISI 316LN over a range of strain rates and temperatures shows typical dynamic recovery and recrystallization behavior. It is proposed to model this behavior by incorporating not only the hardening and recovery into the Bergstrom dislocation evolution equation, but also the recrystallization. It is shown that the initial mechanical response before recrystallization can be accurately represented by assuming that the mean free path evolves as the microstructure evolves from homogeneously spaced dislocations to cell-pattern. Results show that this novel continuum mechanical model can predict the observed behavior, showing a good match to the experimental data and capturing the transition from recrystallization to (almost) no recrystallization.

Laser heat treatments of metastable austenitic stainless steel AISI 301 are presented aiming to elucidate the relation between heat treatment, transformation and mechanical properties after heat treatment. It is assumed that the observed phase reversion of martensite to austenite is due to a diffusional transformation mechanism governed by nucleation and growth leading to submicron grains. Based on this assumption it is demonstrated that the reverse transformation can be successfully predicted by the proposed model. Subsequently the effect of the heat treatment on the hardness is reviewed. It is shown that the proposed hardness-model, in combination with the proposed isothermal transformation model, is in agreement with the observed behavior. Amongst others it is successfully predicted that the isothermal transformation precedes the recrystallization of the retained austenite and that the post-heat treatment grain size has a large effect on the behavior through the Hall-Petch effect.