The effect of temperature on the parameters of plastic deformation localization in stainless steel

The present work is devoted to the study of macroscopic localization of plastic deformation of AISI 321 austenitic stainless steel within a temperature range of 143–300 K, which was chosen in view of the direct martensitic transformation γ → α'. Visualization and evolution of bands of macroscopic localized plastic deformation at the stages of linear strain hardening was carried out by the method of double-exposure speckle photography. Analysis of deformation curves made it possible to identify the following stages: the stage of linear work hardening, the stage of jerky flow, and the yield plateau (at low temperature). An analysis of the distributions of local deformations showed that a system of equidistant mobile localized-strain centers is observed at the stages of linear work hardening. It has been established that lowering the temperature leads to a change in both the duration of the strain hardening stages and localization parameters of the plastic flow.