Mesoscale simulation of ferrite transformation from deformed austenite during continuous cooling in a C–Mn steel using a cellular automaton method

A two dimensional cellular automaton (CA) method is adopted to investigate the growth kinetics of deformed austenite to ferrite transformation during continuous cooling in a C–Mn steel. During thermomechanical processing, part of the energy of deformation is stored in the austenite as the increase in the dislocation density within steels. This stored energy is incorporated into the present CA method as an additional driving force for the ferrite transformation. The modeled ferrite growth kinetics and grain size are compared with the experiments in the literature.