Effect of heat treatment on the deformation behavior during cold rolling of medium Mn steels

Abstract

In the present work, the transformation behavior of medium manganese (Mn) steels and consequently its effects on cold rolling process were studied as means of heat treatment parameters (temperature, time and cooling). The hot-rolled material was subjected to a variety of heat treatment conditions to produce several different microstructures. Hence, this paper discusses the formation of microstructures with different volume fractions, as an outcome from a specific heat treatment, with the following phases: ferrite, martensite, bainite and retained austenite. A strong effect of microstructure was observed to increase the maximum deformation ratio which could be executed during cold rolling without fracture. An attempt has been made to establish a correlation between microstructure and cold rolling behavior for the examined steel samples.