Ultra-high strength and excellent ductility in multi-layer steel sheet of austenitic hadfield and martensitic hot-press-forming steels

An austenitic Hadfield steel sheet shows a relatively low yield strength of 0.4–0.5 GPa and serrated flows in spite of excellent tensile strength and ductility along with highly-sustained strain hardening. In order to overcome the shortcomings, a multi-layer steel (MLS) sheet was fabricated by a roll-bonding with an ultra-high-strength martensitic hot-press-forming (HPF) steel sheet. Near the Hadfield/HPF interface, the carburized and decarburized layers were formed by the carbon diffusion from the Hadfield (1.2% of C) to HPF (0.23% of C) layers, and could generate a kind of very thin multi-layers of 35 μm in thickness. All tensile properties of the Hadfield/HPF MLS sheet (yield strength; 946 MPa, tensile strength; 1291 MPa, elongation; 44.5%) were superior to those of the Hadfield sheet. Interestingly, the persistent elongation up to 44.5%, which is higher than that of the Hadfield steel, in the present MLS sheet is a quite unique and interesting characteristic. The simultaneous enhancement of strength and ductility of the MLS sheet was explained by the contributions of 1) populated twin formation, 2) generation of geometrically necessary dislocations (GNDs), and 3) increase of back stress inside thin interfacial layers.