Quasi-static tensile and fatigue behaviour of a metastable austenitic stainless Cr-Ni-Cu-N steel

The tensile as well as the fatigue behaviour of an experimental copper-alloyed metastable austenitic stainless steel has been investigated. Three batches were studied: (i) cast material as reference state and two states were recrystallised after (ii) rotary swaging and (iii) forward impact extrusion. Deformation-induced α'-martensite was formed during both rotary swaging and forward impact extrusion with volume fractions of 48 vol% and 4 vol%, respectively. The material was then heat treated to form a fine-grained, fully austenitic microstructure. These fine-grained material states exhibited a higher strength compared to the cast state. However, strain-hardening was highest in the cast state. The effect of the initial microstructure on the cyclic deformation behaviour and fatigue life was investigated using strain-controlled tests. During cyclic deformation all three states exhibited a martensitic phase transformation and concurrently a pronounced cyclic hardening with the formation of up to approximately 70 vol% α'-martensite. The fine-grained state produced by rotary swaging and reversion annealing showed a significantly higher fatigue life of about factor 4 compared to the coarse-grained cast state. Relative to forward impact extrusion, rotary swaging provided a higher fatigue life and fatigue strength.