Crystallographic restriction in martensite and bainite transformations in steels

Abstract

Attention to lath martensite and bainite in steels has been increasing due to their good mechanimcal properties. Various boundaries bewteen K-S variants contained in those microstructures contribute to their high strength and toughness so that deeper understand of nature of those boundaries is required. EBSD analyses have revealed that different variant grouping tendencies appear depending on composition and transformation temperature, such as variants belonging to the same Bain group, variants sharing the same close-packed plane parallel relationship. Kinematical compatibility (KC) condition can explain variant pairs coupled preferentially in lenticular and thin plate martensite satisfactory. In addition, it is revealed that some of the variant pairs observed in lath martensite and bainite are favorable for the KC condition when double shears are assuemd for lattice invariant shear.