Variant Selection and Texture in an AISI 301LN Stainless Steel

There has recently been significant interest in the problem of variant selection in the strain-induced transformation of austenite to alpha'-martensite in metastable austenitic stainless steels. Previous work has highlighted our poor understanding of the mechanisms leading to this transformation, in particular the role that the macroscopic stress plays in the transformation. In this work, we have sought to perform detailed experiments aimed at developing a statistical grain level view of variant selection in one particular grade of austenitic stainless steel. EBSD measurements made over a large number of grains as well as macroscopic texture measurements made at different levels of imposed plastic strain allow for comparison against various approaches for predicting variant selection based on the Patel-Cohen interaction energy.