Cold rolled texture and microstructure in types 304 and 316L austenitic stainless steels

Two grades of austenitic stainless steel (ASS), types 304 (UNS S 30400) and 316L (UNS S 31603), were cold rolled to different reductions by unidirectional and by cross-rolling. The steels had reasonable difference in stacking fault energy (estimated respectively as 15 and 61 mJ/m(2) in types 304 and 316L) and also in starting (or pre-deformation) crystallographic texture-being relatively weak and reasonably strong in types 304 and 316L respectively. The cold rolling increased texturing in type 304, but not in type 316L ASS. The more significant effect of cold rolled texture development was in the relative increase of Brass ({011}<211>) against Copper ({112}<111>) and S ({231}<346>) orientations. In type 304 the increase in Brass was significant, while in type 316L the increase in Copper and S was stronger. This effect could be captured by Taylor type deformation texture simulations considering stronger twinning contributions in type 304-for example the respective 'best-fits' (in terms of matching the changes in the volume fractions of Brass against Copper and S) were obtained by full constraint Taylor model with 1 : 100 and 1 : 10 slip: twin activities in types 304 and 316L ASS respectively. Microstructural developments during cold rolling were generalized as strain induced martensite formation and developments of dislocation substructure. The former, as estimated by vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), increased with cold reduction, being significantly more in type 304 and was also noticeably stronger in both grades under cross-rolling. The most significant aspect of substructural developments was the formation of strain localizations. These were observed as dense dislocation walls (DDWs), micro-bands (MBs) and twin lamellar structures (TLS). The TLS contribution gained significance at higher reductions and during cross-rolling, especially in type 304. Large misorientation development and the accompanying grain splittings were always associated with such strain localizations. Efforts to relate Taylor factor (M) and textural softening (dM/depsilon) values (of ideal texture components) with relative misorientation developments was, however, unsuccessful. No consistent trend could be established for any unique combination(s) of slip-twin in the respective alloys.