Effects of Pre-Strain and Two-Step Aging on Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Fe-30Mn-11Al-1.2C Austenitic Low-Density Steel

Lightweight Fe-Mn-Al-C steels are promising candidates for automobile structural materials and have gained increased scientific and commercial interest owing to their outstanding mechanical properties and low density. To date, several studies have been conducted to illustrate the mechanism of phase transformation, strengthening, and strain hardening under solution and aging state. Moreover, prestrain before aging as a low-cost and simple method to tailor precipitates and control properties has been widely reported; however, it has been barely investigated in the Fe-Mn-Al-C alloy system. Therefore, in this study, the effects of pre-cold rolling and two-step aging on the microstructure and mechanical properties of Fe-30Mn-11Al-1.2C (mass fraction, %) austenitic low-density steel are investigated using EBSD, TEM, and universal testing machine. Results showed that the yield strength (YS) significantly increased via the two-step aging from 580 MPa (at solution state) to 1120 MPa, but the uniform elongation (UE) sharply decreased to approximately 0. However, after the pre-cold rolling and two-step aging, the YS of the material further improved to 1220 MPa, and the UE significantly increased to 18.2%, which implies an improvement in the comprehensive mechanical properties of the material. According to the microstructure analysis, the increase in YS after the two-step aging was caused by the ordering strengthening effect of.' carbide. Further, the pre-cold rolling could introduce heterogeneous nucleation sites, inducing intragranular precipitation. The combination of the precipitation strengthening of the precipitates and deformation strengthening induced via the pre-cold rolling further increased the YS of the material. Moreover, these intragranular precipitates could improve the work hardening capability, which is the root cause of the high plasticity of materials. This process provides a novel idea for improving the performance of austenitic lowdensity steels.