Influence of multiaxial cyclic plastic loading on grain boundary misorientation profile in austenitic stainless steel

304LN stainless was subjected to multiaxial loading employing different waveforms and load paths. The grain boundary misorientation profile so obtained post-deformation was compared across loading conditions. It was found that the uniaxial and proportional conditions of loading resulted in more twins, contrary to non-proportional loading conditions that resulted in substantially higher low-angle grain boundaries. Also, under non-proportional loading, the trapezoidal load path resulted in the remarkably altered distribution of the grain boundaries compared to its contemporaries. The predominant martensitic transformation was found to be the dominant mechanism of deformation for trapezoidal loading which also contributed to the altered misorientation profile.