Crystal Plasticity Calculations on Influence of Mn-content on Transformation Induced Plasticity Effect for Medium-Mn Steels

doi:10.11901/1005.3093.2025.311

Chinese Journal of Materials Research

2026, Vol. 40

Issue (6): 437-449 DOI: 10.11901/1005.3093.2025.311

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Crystal Plasticity Calculations on Influence of Mn-content on Transformation Induced Plasticity Effect for Medium-Mn Steels

DENG Zhiwen¹^,², JIA Chunni²(

), LIU Tengyuan², LU Yi²^,³, ZHENG Chengwu², WANG Pei²(

), LI Dianzhong²

^1.School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110089, China
^2.Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China
^3.School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Shenyang 110016, China

Cite this article:

DENG Zhiwen, JIA Chunni, LIU Tengyuan, LU Yi, ZHENG Chengwu, WANG Pei, LI Dianzhong. Crystal Plasticity Calculations on Influence of Mn-content on Transformation Induced Plasticity Effect for Medium-Mn Steels. Chinese Journal of Materials Research, 2026, 40(6): 437-449.

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Abstract

As a typical representative steel of the third generation of advanced high-strength steels (AHSS), medium-Mn steel has a great strength-ductility synergy. It enables effective achievement of safety and lightweighting in design and manufacture for vehicles. In order to understand the deformation-induced plasticity effect of medium-Mn steels, herein, the influence of Mn-content on the heterogeneous deformation behavior at the mesoscale during the deformation of medium-Mn steels was studied via calculating with a crystal plasticity model coupled with deformation-induced martensitic transformation. Furthermore, the partition of stress-strain between austenite and ferrite during uniaxial tension, as well as the martensitic phase transformation process triggered by the deformation of austenite were calculated, whilst, the changes in Mn distribution caused by the difference in austenite composition during the critical zone heat treatment of two typical Mn-steels (0.2C-7Mn and 0.2C-5Mn) were also taken into account. Besides, the impact of austenite mechanical stability on the mechanical properties of the medium-Mn steels was also studied in terms of the austenite stacking fault energy (SFE). The results show that the enhanced mechanical stability of the 7Mn steel may be ascribed to the high stacking fault energy of the austenite in the 7Mn steel. Besides, the martensitic transformation occurs within a small strain range for the 5Mn steel, while for the 7Mn steel, the deformation-induced transformation occurs at applied strains higher than that for the 5Mn steel, and the initial nuclei of martensite are more numerous and more dispersed for the 7Mn steel. It follows that the differences in the deformation-induced phase transformation of these two steels may result in different of phase transformation induced plasticity (TRIP) effect and also lead to differences in their mechanical properties.

Key words: metallic materials medium-Mn steel crystal plasticity deformation-induced martensite transformation mechanical property

Received: 24 October 2025

TG142

Fund: National Natural Science Foundation of China(52301181)

Corresponding Authors: JIA Chunni, Tel: (024)83971973, E-mail: cnjia@imr.ac.cn;
WANG Pei, Tel: (024)83970106, E-mail: pwang@imr.ac.cn

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	DENG Zhiwen
	JIA Chunni
	LIU Tengyuan
	LU Yi
	ZHENG Chengwu
	WANG Pei
	LI Dianzhong

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https://www.cjmr.org/EN/10.11901/1005.3093.2025.311 OR https://www.cjmr.org/EN/Y2026/V40/I6/437

Table 1 Martensite transformation systems used in the crystal plasticity model

$χ$	Fault-band system $m t w χ ⊗ n t w χ$
1	$[2 ¯ 11] ⊗ (111) / 18$
2	$[1 ¯ 2 1 ¯] ⊗ (111) / 18$
3	$[11 2 ¯] ⊗ (111) / 18$
4	$[2 ¯ 1 ¯ 1 ¯] ⊗ (1 ¯ 11) / 18$
5	$[12 1 ¯] ⊗ (1 ¯ 11) / 18$
6	$[1 ¯ 1 2 ¯] ⊗ (1 ¯ 11) / 18$
7	$[2 ¯ 1 ¯ 1] ⊗ (1 1 ¯ 1) / 18$
8	$[1 ¯ 12] ⊗ (1 1 ¯ 1) / 18$
9	$[2 1 ¯ 1] ⊗ (1 1 ¯ 1) / 18$
10	$[1 2 ¯ 1 ¯] ⊗ (11 1 ¯) / 18$
11	$[111] ⊗ (11 1 ¯) / 18$
12	$[1 ¯ 1 ¯ 2 ¯] ⊗ (11 1 ¯) / 18$

Table 2 Fault-band systems of the fcc crystal structure

Fig.1 Schematic representation of crystal plasticity constitutive model

Fig.2 SEM micrographs of deformed microstructure (a) 7Mn steel, (b) 5Mn steel

Fig.3 Engineering stress-strain curves of 7Mn steel and 5Mn steel in the experiment and papers

Fig.4 Macroscopic stress-strain curves of different sizes (a) and meshes (b) of RVE model

Fig.5 RVE models based on the microstructure of 7Mn steel (a) and 5Mn steel (b)

Table 3 Crystal elastic constants for austenite and ferrite used in the simulations^[34,35]

Deformation mechanism	Parameters	fcc	bcc	Units
Slip	Magnitude of Burgers vector for each slip system	$2.56 × 10 - 10$	$2.58 × 10 - 10$	m
	Activation energy for glide for each slip system	$3.0 × 10 - 19$	$2.5 × 10 - 19$	J
	Adjustment parameter p for slip	0.5	0.4
	Adjustment parameter q for slip	1.3	1.3
	Strength due to elements in solid solution	$6.5 × 108$	$2.8 × 108$	Pa
Transformation	Magnitude of Burgers vector for each transformation system	$1.47 × 10 - 10$	-	m
	Width of martensite nucleus	$1.27 × 10 - 7$	-	m
	Adjustment parameter for transformation	3.0	-
	Martensite lamellar thickness for each transformation system	$1.0 × 10 - 7$	-	m
	Stacking fault energy	10.0	-	mJ/m²

Table 4 Constitutive parameters of 7Mn steel for the crystal plasticity model

Fig.6 Macroscopic stress-strain curves of the experiment and the crystal plasticity simulation for 7Mn steel and 5Mn steel

Table 5 Calculated Mn content in fcc and bcc by Thermo-Calc of 7Mn steel and 5Mn steel (mass fraction, %)

Fig.7 Distributions of deformation-induced martensitic transformation of simplified models with stacking fault energy of 20 mJ/m² (a1-a3), 15 mJ/m² (b1-b3), and 10 mJ/m² (c1-c3) at ε = 0.01 (a1-c1), 0.02 (a2-c2), and 0.03 (a3-c3)

Fig.8 Dislocation density along path L1 and L2 shown in Fig.7

Fig.9 Von Mises stress distributions of simplified models with stacking fault energy of 20 mJ/m² (a1-a3), 15 mJ/m² (b1-b3), and 10 mJ/m² (c1-c3) at ε = 0.01 (a1-c1), 0.02 (a2-c2), and 0.03 (a3-c3)

Fig.10 Strain hardening rate of austenite and the kinetics of transformation in 7Mn steel and 5Mn steel

Fig.11 Evolution of deformation-induced martensitic transformation for the crystal plasticity simulation of 7Mn steel (a1-d1) and 5Mn steel (a2-d2) at ε = 0.01 (a1, a2), 0.02 (b1, b2), 0.03 (c1, c2), and 0.04 (d1, d2)

Fig.12 Von Mises stress distributions for the crystal plasticity simulation of 7Mn steel (a1-d1) and 5Mn steel (a2-d2) at ε =0.04 (a1, a2), 0.09 (b1, b2), 0.14 (c1, c2), and 0.19 (d1, d2)

Fig.13 Calculated dislocation density (a1, a2) and stress-strain curves (b1, b2) in fcc and bcc, and dislocation density distributions (c1, c2) of 7Mn steel (a1-c1) and 5Mn steel (a2-c2) at ε = 0.19

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