The ow stress of high C-Mn austenitic steel is attributed to lattice friction, dynamic strain aging (DSA), mechanical twinning and forest hardening. However, it has not been clari ed yet which mechanism quantitatively contributes most to the work hardening of 12.5Mn-1.1C steel. In this study, austenitic Had eld steel (1.1 wt.% C and 12.5 wt.% Mn) was tensile tested at a strain rate of 10 s − 1 . The lattice friction was estimated by the Hall-Petch relationship. DSA effect was neglected because of the high strain rate of deformation. Twin plates characteristics and dislocation densities were estimated quantitatively at different strain levels (11, 18, 25, 38, and 55%). The deformed twin plates were studied by optical and transmission electron microscopies. Dislocation densities were estimated by analyzing the X-ray diffraction patterns using Rietveld analyses. A linear approach was utilized to model the ow stress during the plastic deformation, and it is found that the linear model is consistent with the experimental results. During the early stages of the plastic deformation, the mechanical twinning was the dominant deformation mechanism, and it was more effective to the ow stress than the forest hardening due to the enhancement of the twin nucleation process. However, with increasing the strain level, the thicknesses of the twinned plates were increased rather than the initiation of new twin plates, resulting in a reduced contribution by the mechanical twinning to the ow stress. On the other hand, increasing the dislocation densities with an increase in the strain level was detected, which resulted in an enhanced contribution by forest hardening to the ow stress more than the mechanical twinning.