An in situ high-energy X-ray diffraction study of micromechanical behavior of multiple phases in advanced high-strength steels

The micromechanical behavior of high-strength steels with multiple phases was characterized using the in situ high-energy X-ray diffraction technique. For the materials investigated, the {2 0 0} lattice strains of the constituent phases (ferrite, bainite and martensite) with similar crystal structures were determined by separating their overlapped diffraction peaks and then examining the respective changes in peak positions during deformation. Based on those experimental data, the anisotropic elastic and plastic properties of the steels were simulated using a self-consistent model for predicting the grain-to-grain and phase-to-phase interactions. The constitutive laws for describing the elastic and plastic behavior of each constituent phase were directly obtained by comparing the predicted lattice strain distributions with the measured ones. The transmission electron microscopy observations of the microstructure development verified the partitioning of plastic strains among different phases. The present investigations provide a fundamental understanding of the stress partitioning of soft and hard phases, and the different work-hardening rates of the multiphase steels.