Part VII – July 1969 - Papers - Nature of the Work-Hardening Behavior in Hadfield's Manganese Steel

A detailed transmission electron microscopy investigation was carried out in connection with a manganese Hadfield Steel. At small plastic strains, numerous individual intrinsic stacking faults are observed. With increased plastic deformation, the stacking faults thicken into twin lamellae which in turn subdivide the original austenite matrix into smaller domains. The twin boundaries act as strong barriers to subsequent dislocation motion and is in a sense equivalent to grain refinement. It is this "grain refinement" which is believed to be the cause of the very high work hardening rates in the Hadfield Steels. In many cases, especially where an hcp phase is the stable one at low temperatures, the stacking fault energy in fcc metals and alloys decreases with decreasing temperature.' Since stacking faults of the intrinsic type are precursors of both twins as well as the hexagonal close packed structure, both of these entities should become more frequent as the temperature of a fcc crystal is lowered. In the case of the twin, there is no chemical driving force for its formation and it is generally necessary to provide the required driving force by an applied stress, i.e., strain energy. In the case of the hcp structure the transformation from the fcc modification can occur spontaneously (marten-sitically) since a decrease in chemical energy does in fact occur; however, an applied stress will provide an even greater driving force toward complete transformation. Since the transformation products mentioned above occur in an inhomogeneous manner throughout the crystal and since these can act as potential barriers to further plastic deformation2 marked strengthening effects can be anticipated. Also because metal and alloy strenghening is in general proportional to the shear modulus, these effects should be greatest in steels of the austenitic type (y), i.e., the fcc types. Perhaps the two most important steels in this category are the austenitic stainless steels and the Hadfield manganese steels. Both may be quenched from elevated temperatures so as to retain the austenitic states characteristic of those temperatures. The effect of subsequent deformation at lower tem- peratures has a profound effect on the stress-strain curves of these alloys. In particular Fig. 1 shows the compressive stress-strain curves obtained with an 18-8 stainless steel which was quenched from 1850°C after annealing for 1 hr so as to produce all y. As the temperature is lowered, the work hardening rate increases markedly. Although some hcp or c mar-tensite can be generated by plastic deformation as the temperature is lowered,~ it is believed to be a transition phase4 and most of the martensite produced is of the bcc or a variety.3 It is this stress induced martensite which gives rise to the very low initial work hardening at 77°K as can be seen in the stress-strain curve in Fig. 1. Similar low initial work hardening rates have been observed in the stress induced Ni-Ti martensites.5 Fig. 2 shows that an even more rapid rate of work hardening occurs in the Hadfield steels treated in the same way as that described for the 18-8 stainless steels a; the temperature is lowered. It is this ability to work harden to such high stress levels that makes the Hadfield steels particularly suitable for armor plate and heavy construction equipment. However, unlike the case of Fig. 1, no initial low rate of work hardening is observed in any of the curves in Fig. 2. Thus the stress induced formation of any low energy martensite phase in any significant quantity must be ruled out. This observation is in accord with the X-ray findings of Otte.~ On the other hand, small quantities of the E phase have been observed by other investigators using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) above Even more significant was the fact that large numbers of deformation twins were observed in the deformed Hadfield steels,678 which were postulated to be one of the reasons for the high work hardening ability of this class of steels.8 It is the purpose in what follows to discuss a series of experimental observations pertaining to the stress induced transformation in a Hadfield steel and to formulate a dislocation mechanism which adequately accounts for the observed results. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE The stainless steel used to obtain the curves shown in Fig. 1 was of the AISI Type 303 containing approximately 18.0 pct Cr and 8 pct Ni. On the other hand, the Hadfield manganese steel used to obtain the curves shown in Fig. 2 contained between 1.00 to 1.25 pct and 11.5 to 13.5 pct Mn. In all cases the samples were in the form of compression cylinders 0.220 in. in diam and 0.370 in. long. Prior to testing the samples were annealed for a hr at 1050°C and rapidly quenched into a brine solution. This treatment was sufficient to preserve the y phase for subsequent testing at lower temperatures. All samples were compressed in an Instron testing machine using a cross head speed of 0.02 in.