Study by EBSD of the development of the substructure in a hot deformed 304 stainless steel

The EBSD technique is a useful tool to characterize deformation microstructures. In this study a 304 stainless steel was hot deformed to different strains in torsion mode. The application of the above-mentioned technique focused on the characterization of the high angle boundary distribution evolution under strain. Special emphasis was given to the Σ3 boundaries. It was observed that as the deformation increased the twin character was progressively lost and at the same time, some of the twins appear to be curved in the microstructure. The orientation analysis carried out inside the grains led to a classification of the grains according to the way that in-grain orientation spreads develop.