A Transmission Kikuchi Diffraction Study of a Cold‐Rolled and Annealed Fe–17Mn–2Si–3Al–1Ni–0.06C wt% Steel

This study applies the recently developed transmission Kikuchi diffraction technique to investigate the microstructures and micro‐textures of a multi‐phase Fe–17Mn–3Al–2Si–1Ni–0.08C wt% steel that concurrently exhibits twinning‐ and transformation‐induced plasticity effects. The steel was cold rolled to 66% thickness reduction and subsequently annealed at 625 °C for 300 s. The cold‐rolled microstructure mainly consisted of α′ martensite interspersed with blocky ϵ martensite and remanent nanometer‐sized grains of γ. Annealing at 625 °C led to the partial transformation of α′ → γ and the reversion of ϵ → γ such that the microstructure comprised predominant nanometer‐sized γ grains interspersed with a smaller α′ phase and a trace fraction of nanometer‐sized ϵ along γ grain boundaries. During deformation via cold rolling and reverse transformation during annealing, micro‐texture analysis indicated the operation of the Shoji‐Nishiyama, Kurdjumov‐Sachs, and Burgers ORs between γ ↔ ϵ, γ ↔ α′, and ϵ ↔ α′, respectively.