The kinetics of the austenite–ferrite phase transformation of Fe-Mn: differential thermal analysis during cooling

Abstract Differential thermal analysis (DTA) has been employed to study the austenite–ferrite phase transformation of Fe-1.89at% Mn upon cooling. The transformation has been shown to occur in two stages. The first stage is not thermally activated; the second stage is thermally activated. A phase transformation model, incorporating a new impingement correction, has been used for the extraction, from the DTA experiments, of data for the velocity of the austenite–ferrite interface. It follows that the interface velocity does not only depend on temperature, but also on transformed fraction. This has been interpreted as the consequence of the (non-neglectable) dissipation of energy by the volume misfit of the austenite and ferrite phases during the transformation. This misfit accommodation Gibbs energy has been assessed quantitatively; it has been shown to be of the same order of magnitude as the chemical Gibbs energy.