Formation of nano-grained structure in a 301 stainless steel using a repetitive thermo-mechanical treatment

Abstract

In this work effects of the thermo-mechanical parameters were investigated in order to achieve nanocrystalline structure in the as-cast AISI 301 stainless steel. In order to get nanocrystalline structure the repetitive cold rolling and subsequent annealing were used. The cold rolling was carried out at temperatures of 0, – 10 and – 196 °C with strain rate of 0.5 s− 1 and reduction of 95%, while the annealing treatment was conducted at temperature 600 to 850 °C for 0.5 to 50 min. The results showed that the nanocrystalline austenitic structure with grain size of about 30–40 nm was obtained by annealing at 850 °C for 0.5 min after totally 95% cold rolling reduction at – 10 °C.