Abstract
There is often a tradeoff between strength and ductility, and the low ductility of ultrafine-grained (UFG) materials has been a major obstacle to their practical structural applications despite their high strength. In this study, we have achieved a ∼40% tensile ductility while increasing the yield strength of FeCrNiMn steel by an order of magnitude via grain refinement and deformation-induced martensitic phase transformation. The strain-rate effect on the inhomogeneous deformation behavior and phase transformation was studied in detail.
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Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program (DMR-0421219) and International Materials Institutes (IMI) Program (DMR-0231320) with Dr. C. Bouldin and Dr. C. Huber as the Program Directors, respectively. X-L. Wang acknowledges support by Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, United States Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. Y.H. Zhao and Y.T. Zhu were supported by the DOE Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) program.
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Cheng, S., Choo, H., Zhao, Y. et al. High ductility of ultrafine-grained steel via phase transformation. Journal of Materials Research 23, 1578–1586 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1557/JMR.2008.0213
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/JMR.2008.0213