An approach to prior austenite reconstruction

One area of interest in Friction Stir Welding (FSW) of steels is to understand microstructural evolution during the process. Most of the deformation occurs in the austenite temperature range. Quantitative microstructural measurements of prior austenite microstructure are needed in order to understand evolution of the microstructure. Considering the fact that room temperature microstructure in ferritic steels contains very little to no retained austenite, prior austenite microstructure needs to be recovered from the room temperature ferrite. In this paper, an approach based on Electron Backscattered Diffraction (EBSD) is introduced to detect Bain zones. Bain zone detection is used to reconstruct prior austenite grain structure. Additionally, a separate approach based on phase transformation orientation relationships is introduced in order to recover prior austenite orientation.