Achievement of high strength-ductility combination in austenitic and ferritic duplex stainless steel by heterogeneous deformation

In this work, heterostructured duplex stainless steel consisting of fine-grained austenite and bimodal-grained ferrite was prepared by heavy cold rolling and 2-min annealing at 1050 degrees C. The tailored steel achieved an excellent combination of high strength with a yield stress of -710 MPa and high ductility with a tensile elongation of -43%. The results revealed that the plastic incompatibilities between the constituent phases arising from the microstructural heterogeneity contributed to the significant partitioning of plastic strain, and the respectable strength-ductility synergy was attributed to hetero-deformation induced strengthening and strain hardening. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).