High-strength steels with a body-centered cubic (bcc) crystal structure are generally expected to exhibit limited ductility at low temperatures due to the ductile-to-brittle transition. In this talk, we show that some high-strength bcc steels can nevertheless display unexpectedly large macroscopic plasticity during tensile deformation at cryogenic temperatures, even below their transition regime. A systematic tensile testing campaign across temperatures and stress states reveals strongly coupled effects on damage and fracture, which are captured using a mechanism-informed continuum damage model with implications for structural materials in extreme environments.
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