Effect of Thermomechanical Parameters on Grain Growth and Recrystallization during Grain Boundary Engineering of Austenitic Stainless Steel

Grain boundary engineering has been attracting attention as an effective method to prevent intergranular corrosion of austenitic stainless steel and Ni based alloys. It has been considered that grain growth and recrystallization play important role in evolution of grain boundary character distribution during thermomechanical process. However, systematic researches to examine the effect of thermomechanical process parameters on grain growth and recrystallization have not been performed. In this study, grain boundary character distribution of 304 austenitic stainless steel after thermomechanical process with various parameters was analysed by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). Grain boundary character distribution was mainly affected by the reduction ratio of cold rolling. Abnormal grain growth was observed in the specimen with small reduction ratio (3%). Length ratio of coincident site lattice (CSL) boundaries was drastically increased to 86% in the 3% cold rolled and annealed specimens from 67% in the base material. On the other hand, normal grain growth was observed in thermomechanical processed specimens with slightly higher reduction of cold rolling (5%). In these specimens length ratio of CSL boundaries did not exceed 80%, which is required to disconnect the random boundary networks and to improve intergranular corrosion resistance effectively. Detailed analysis of grain boundary character distribution has shown that disconnection of random boundary networks was achieved by formation of annealing twins during abnormal grain growth.