Twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) steels have excellent combinationof strength and ductility and are potential lightweight materials forautomotive applications. Understanding the deformation mechanisms in TWIPsteels is essential for the successful application of TWIP steels. The firstpart of this work is to employ micron-sized single crystalline pillars toinvestigate the nucleation and growth mechanism of deformation twins. It isfound that the nucleation and growth of deformation twins are due to emissionand glide of successive partial dislocations. A physical model is proposed tosimulate the nucleation and growth of deformation twins. The second part of thepresentation discusses the deformationmechanism of bulk samples. Deformation mechanism of bulk samples at high strainrates will be discussed firstly. By synchrotron X-raydiffraction experiments, the present work demonstrates that a higher strainrate leads to a lower dislocation density and a lower twinning probability,which is opposite to other fcc metals. Furthermore, it has been demonstratedthat the contribution of twins to the flow stress is very limited. Instead,dislocations strengthening via forest hardening accounts for up to 90% of theflow stress. In other words, the contribution of twins to flow stress of TWIPsteels may have been overestimated in the existing literature. Finally, thepresent talk will discuss a nanotwinned steelwhich is manufactured by a simple thermomechanical treatment consisting of coldrolling and recovery annealing and possesses a high yield strength (1450 MPa)and considerable uniform tensile elongation (20%).
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