Effect of thermomechanical process history on grain boundary control in an austenitic stainless steel

The influence of cold roll reduction history on grain boundary network development in an austenitic stainless steel has been investigated. A dominant effect of the final thermomechanical process cycles on grain boundary character development was observed. The application of low-strain processing cycles with 5% cold reduction was found to increase the fraction of Σ3 and Σ3-related variants on solution annealing. Two-step processing treatments with final reductions between 15% and 82% showed no significant differences to their single-step processed equivalents.