Fe-12Mn steel has the unique and interesting property that, when quenched to ' martensite from the austenite phase, it forms an ultrafine grained microstructure that has exceptional resistance to cleavage fracture at cryogenic temperatures. The present research was undertaken to complete the characterization of this microstructure and understand why it forms and why it has such exceptional crack resistance. A combination of EBSD and TEM analysis shows that the microstructure is a dislocated lath martensite in which the laths have the Kurdjumov-Sachs relation to the parent austenite. As in other dislocated lath martensites, the prior austenite grains are divided into packets, each of which contains the 6 (of 24) KS variants that mate with the same 111 { } g plane. Uniquely, however, the packets are stacks of thin plates that contain all 6 KS variants. The variants within the plate are organized into 3 pair of twinned KS variants that are elongated along their 112 { } a twin planes, rotated 120º from one another, and interwoven to form the 6-variant plate. The ultrafine grains are the laths themselves; twin boundaries between KS variants are known to provide strong barriers to cleavage crack propagation. This unusual microstructure is apparently due to the transformation path; austenite transforms to the hexagonal martensite phase before its ultimate transformation to ', and the 6-variant plate is the preferred element to minimize elastic energy in a microstructure created by a dominant g ® e ® a' transformation path.
This paper discusses the utilization of nano-sized fillers in Polyamide 6 to increase the fracture resistance of the composites, which are crucial for various engineering applications. The toughening of the composites is achieved by using dispersed nano-scaled rubber particles (Polyether block copolymer) as the inclusion in Polyamide 6 matrix. For a better understanding of the mechanical behavior of the composites, it is indispensable to use analytical and numerical models for evaluating the overall mechanical behavior and damage mechanism of the composite. In this work the toughening mechanism is studied through literature review and by analytical modeling. The mechanical behavior of the composites such as elastic plastic and damage properties are calculated numerically with 3D representative volume element (RVE) models. The numerical results are compared with previously obtained experiments. The influence of volume fraction and aspect ratio of inclusions on the macroscopic stress strain curve as well as the size effect of inclusions and also the failure properties of the composite are studied in detail.
A study has been made on the effects of Mn content and addition of Al on the microstructure and mechanical properties of (4-6)Mn steels, with the aim of developing ferritic Mn steels having good combination of tensile properties and impact toughness. It has been shown that the reduction of Mn content to 6 wt% and lower from 8-12 wt% of conventional steels can effectively prevent the occurrence of intergranular fracture, which has been a major problem of (8-12)Mn steels with poor toughness at cryogenic temperature. While increasing Mn content in the binary (4-6)Mn steels results in an increase in strength and a decrease in impact toughness, the addition of 1Al to (4-6)Mn steels results in improvements in both strength and impact toughness as compared to those of the binary (4-6)Mn steels and the best impact toughness has been obtained in the as-rolled 1Al added 4Mn steel, whose microstructure consists of fine acicular ferrite grains.
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