Optimization of Cold Rolling and Subsequent Annealing Treatment on Mechanical Properties of TWIP Steel

This research work studied the effect of cold rolling reduction and subsequent annealing temperature on the microstructural evolution and the mechanical properties of Fe-32Mn-4Si-2Al twinning-induced plasticity steel plates. For this, uniaxial tensile tests were carried out for three cold rolling reductions (50, 65 and 80%) and subsequent annealing treatment at 550-750 °C for 1.8 ks. The results were discussed in terms of the yield strength, ultimate tensile strength and total elongation and its dependence on the introduced microstructure. Regression analysis was used to develop the mathematical models of the mechanical properties. Moreover, analysis of variance was employed to verify the precision of the mathematical models. Finally, desirability function was used as an effective optimization approach for multi-objective optimization of the cold rolling reduction and annealing temperature. It is considerable that there is no research attempting to find optimum mechanical properties of the steels using this approach. The results indicated that applying large cold rolling reduction (upper than 75%) and subsequent annealing treatment in the recovery region and also the application of large cold rolling reduction and the subsequent annealing treatment in the lower limit of partial recrystallization region were effective methods to obtain an excellent combination of mechanical properties.