Effects of carbon and nitrogen on Hall–Petch relationship in austenitic stainless steel

Hall-Petch relationship was investigated for austenitic stainless steels with either 0.3 wt% C or N. It was found that Hall-Petch slope was higher for the nitrogen-containing steel, which implied that higher stress was required to activate the dislocation source in adjacent grains. It was suggested that the nitrogen in the steel generated slip planarity which hindered the cross-slip at the grain boundaries and delayed the activation of the dislocation source.