Effect of warm- rolling and intercritical annealing on microstructure and mechanical properties of medium- Mn steel

Effect of warm- rolling and subsequent intercritical annealing time at 650?? on microstructure and mechanical properties of a medium- Mn steel 0. 1C- 5Mn was investigated by using uniaxial tensile testing, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X- ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The results show that a duplex microstructure having both equiaxed and lamellar morphologies of reverted austenite and ferrite is obtained after intercritical annealing of the warm- rolled steel sheet. The amount of reverted austenite and its size increase with increasing annealing time, which causes a decrease of the mechanical stability of austenite and thus an increase of ultimate tensile strength (UTS) while a decrease of yield strength, total elongation (TEL) and the product of UTS to TEL (UTS??TEL). An excellent combination of strength and ductility of 40GPa??% could be obtained after a short time annealing of 5min. The combination of strength and ductility (UTS??TEL) could be increased by about 20% for the warm- rolled steel sheet compared to that of the cold- rolled steel sheet. It is thus proposed that warm- rolling is a promising way to simplify the traditional multi- stage rolling and annealing processes of medium- Mn steels as well as further enhancing it mechanical properties.