Influence of Annealing Process on Recrystallisation Behaviour of a Heavily Cold Rolled AISI 304L Stainless Steel on Ultrafine Grain Formation

AISI 304L austenitic stainless steel was cold rolled to 90% with and no inter-pass cooling to produced 89% and 43% of deformation induced martensite respectively. The cold rolled specimens were annealed by isothermal and cyclic thermal process. The microstructures of the cold rolled and
annealed specimens were studied by the electron microscope. The observed microstructural changes were correlated with the reversion mechanism of martensite to austenite and strain heterogeneity of the microstructure. The results indicated possibility of ultrafine austenite grain formation by cyclic thermal process for austenitic stainless steels those do not readily undergo deformation induced martensite.