The mechanical stability of austenite in 3rd generation advanced high strength steels

Advanced High Strength Steels are of great interest for the automotive industry. The key to getting an optimal mechanical response of these steels is to control the deformation-induced austenite to martensite transformation. However, the austenite resistance to transformation has not been well understood yet due to the complexities involved in studying the transformation process and decoupling the different microstructural factors influencing the stress/strain-induced transformation. In order to identify the role of the starting microstructure on the mechanical stability of austenite, we propose to conduct in-situ tensile tests at room temperature on microstructures specifically designed to study austenite grain size, austenite morphology and the surrounding mechanical constraint effects on the mechanical stability of austenite.