Modeling the Work Hardening Behavior of High-Manganese Steels

The work hardening of a series of high-manganese steels with various chemical compositions (manganese contents of 18–30 wt.% and carbon contents of 0.06–1.2 wt.%) and deformation products (mechanical twins and/or e-martensite) was modeled using a physics-based model. The model comprised the contributions of dislocation glide and phase transition (mechanical twinning and/or e-martensite formation) kinetics to the overall work hardening rate. The model parameters included the physical characteristics of the steels such as the stacking fault energy as well as the microstructural features such as the volume fraction of the deformation products. A key point of the model was that it is globally applicable for all high-manganese steels—including twinning-induced plasticity and/or transformation-induced plasticity steels—instead of being limited to a specific category of these steels. A good agreement was found between the predicted and observed work hardening for all the experimental alloys in this study as well as several high-manganese steels in the literature.