Development and characterisation of C–Mn–Al–Si–Nb TRIP aided steel

Performance of TRIP (transformation induced plasticity) aided steel depends on the amount and stability of retained austenite in the final microstructure. In the current work, a small sized C–Mn–Si–Al–Nb steel was made and suitably heat treated to produce multiphase TRIP microstructure. A combination of relevant transformation models and empirical artificial neural network based model was used to select the heat treatment parameters required to achieve the desired amount of retained austenite. Characterisation of microstructure carried out using a variety of techniques confirmed the predictions of these models. The alloy was found to have an attractive combination of strength and ductility.