Effect of grain size on stretch-flangeability of twinning-induced plasticity steels

The effect of grain size on stretch-flangeability was investigated to determine its influence on stretch-flangeability of high strength steels. To avoid other effects of microstructure, single-phase twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) steels were selected for the investigation. To control the grain size of two types of TWIP steels, 1) the initial specimen was annealed at 1100 ℃ to increase its grain size, or 2) subjected to high-pressure torsion then annealed at 650 ℃ to reduce the grain size. The microstructural features were analyzed using the electron backscatter diffraction. The stretch-flangeability of TWIP steels with various grain sizes was evaluated using a hole-expansion test. It was found that the hole-expansion ratio follows the Hall-Petch correlation as does fracture toughness. To improve the stretch-flangeability of high strength steels, microstructural features should be designed to increase their fracture toughness.