Grain-orientation-dependent residual stress and the effect of annealing in cold-rolled stainless steel

Cold rolling leads to a residual stress that is dependent not only on the specimen directions but also on the orientation of the grain. Neutron diffraction was used to investigate residual stresses and the effect of annealing in cold-rolled stainless steel, a two-phase material consisting of 62 vol% austenite and the rest deformation-induced martensite. The specimens were prepared by cold rolling of AISI 301 stainless steel with 48% reduction. The grain-orientation-dependent residual stress, or inter-granular stress, was determined by constructing the stress orientation distribution function, a recently developed concept, from the residual strains measured along various crystallographic directions. For the cold-rolled sample, a strong grain orientation anisotropy was observed for residual stresses in both phases. Detailed analysis of the experimental stress and texture data indicates that the observed orientation anisotropy was caused by the selective phase transformation that occurred during cold rolling. Annealing at 500°C leads to recovery, which significantly reduces the orientation anisotropy of the residual stress. The experimental data show that the recovery dynamics in the austenite and martensite phases are quite different. It appears that the overall recovery behavior in this two-phase material is driven by the martensite phase. © 2002 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.