Mechanical behaviour of nitrogen-alloyed austenitic stainless steel hardened by warm rolling

This investigation deals with the hardening effect, by warm rolling, of the alloy Uranus B66®, a nitrogen-alloyed austenitic stainless steel produced by Creusot-Loire Industrie. The warm rolling process leads to substructural changes from the appearance of planar slips at low deformation, the micro-twins formation followed by sequences of their bending, breaking and disappearance at intermediate deformation, and finally to the formation of heavily deformed domains at the highest warm rolling reduction. The mechanical behaviour of the warm rolled Uranus B66, under quasi-static tensile and quasi-static and dynamic compression tests, has been analysed. Warm rolling increases the mechanical resistance to a saturation level and decreases the ductility when compared to that of the as-received material. The dynamic flow stress after warm rolling up to 85% increases to such a level that brittle fracture occurs after small plastic deformation. The origin of the strength saturation is related to the terminal microstructure derived from the warm rolling deformation.