Phase Transformation Kinetics During Annealing of Cold-Rolled AISI 309Si Stainless Steel

The effects of cold rolling and the subsequent annealing were studied for the AISI 309Si stainless steel. During annealing of cold-rolled sheets, the hardness curve vs temperature showed two regimes of transformations (reversion and recrystallization), where the JMAK analysis revealed that the activation energy of both processes is equal to the lattice diffusion activation energy in austenitic stainless steel. Finally, based on the kinetics analysis, a recrystallization-temperature-time diagram for phase transformations was proposed.