An investigation was made of the structural changes which accompanied cold-working and annealing of seven austenitic stainless steels. The materials included five laboratory alloys and two commercial grades (304, 316). X-ray line profile analysis showed that the stacking-fault energies of the seven steels ranged from 8 to 68mJ/m2. The cold-worked structure was found to be related to the stacking-fault energy. Dislocations tended to be arranged in planar arrays and to be confined to the original slip planes in alloys of low stacking-fault energy. The dislocation arrangement was less uniform and more random for steels with high stacking-fault energies. In no case was the stacking-fault energy high enough to allow the cross-slip necessary to generate the dislocation cell structures often seen in other metals. The annealing temperature required for the start of recrystallization was found to be related to the stacking-fault energy.

Cold-Worked State and Annealing Behaviour of Austenitic Stainless Steel. S.W.Yang, J.E.Spruiell: Journal of Materials Science, 1982, 17[3], 677-90