Strain hardening of cold-rolled lean-alloyed metastable ferritic-austenitic stainless steels

Mechanical properties and strain hardening of two pilot-scale lean-alloyed ferritic-austenitic stainless steels having metastable austenite phase, present at 0.50 and 0.30 volume fractions, have been studied by means of tensile testing and nanoindentation. These ferritic-austenitic stainless steels have high strain-hardening capacity, due to the metastable austenite phase, which leads to an improved uniform elongation and higher tensile strength...