“…Firstly, the contribution of strain energy may arise from the generation of a compressive state of stress in austenite during the transformation process [41,43,44], which thermodynamically stabilizes austenite against its transformation into martensite [45][46][47]. Secondly, the contribution of strain energy may result from strengthening of the parent austenite phase during martensite formation [38,48,49], which inhibits growth of the martensite lath [48,50]. Strengthening of the austenite during martensite formation was suggested as the athermal mechanism controlling the overall kinetics of martensitic transformations in steel [38,48].…”