Effect of Severe Plastic Deformation on Mechanical Properties of Fe-Ni-Mn High Strength Steel

Fe-Ni-Mn martensitic steels show excellent age hardenability but suffer from embrittlement after aging. Discontinuous coarsening of grain boundary precipitates was found as the main source of embrittlement. Effect of cold rolling and equal channel angular pressing on the mechanical properties of an Fe-10Ni-7Mn steel was investigated. Cold rolling for 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 90% and equal channel angular pressing for four passes through the Bc route were carried out on a solution annealed material with subsequent aging at 753 K. Hardness measurement, tensile test and scanning electron microscopy were used to study mechanical properties and microstructural features of the as-deformed and aged alloys. Improvement in tensile properties of the as-deformed and aged alloys was found. A tensile strength of about 1840 MPa along with 3% elongation were determined for cold rolled by 90% thickness reduction and aged alloy, while conventional steel shows a premature fracture stress of 820 MPa with zero ductility. It was also indicated that after heavy cold rolling ductility increases in comparison to the equal channel angular pressed and aged alloy.