Effect of Elevated Deformation Temperatures on Microstructural and Tensile Behavior of Si-Al Alloyed TRIP-Aided Steel

The influence of elevated deformation temperatures on the relationships between the microstructure and mechanical properties in a hot-rolled Si-Al-alloyed transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP)-aided steel was studied in a static tensile test. The morphological features of specimens deformed at the different temperatures were characterized by different microstructural techniques: optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). An increase in the deformation temperature from 20 to 200 °C resulted in the reduced effectiveness of the TRIP effect, due to the increasing mechanical stability of the γ phase. The gradual transformation of retained austenite into martensite expressed by a progressive increase in the work hardening exponent (n) led to a beneficial balance of strength, uniform elongation and total elongation. The best product of UTS × TEl = 17,805 MPa% showed the sample deformed at 20 °C with a peak n value amounting to 0.3.