Reduction of Anisotropy in Cold-Rolled Duplex Stainless Steel Sheets by Using Sigma Phase Transformation

The mechanical properties of rolled duplex stainless steel (DSS) products manufactured by the current industrial process exhibit a strong anisotropy. This fact is evidently due to the two-phase nature of DSSs. During industrial rolling, not only the morphology of the microstructure changes from coarse-grained isotropic in the cast slab to fine-grained anisotropic in the coil, with both phases elongated in the rolling direction (RD), but also clear and intense crystallographic rolling textures develop, especially in the ferritic phase. The objective of the present work was to modify the industrial processing route and parameters in such a way that the strong anisotropy of DSS coils and sheets is decreased and the amount of potential applications made from DSSs by deep drawing or roll forming operations is increased. To achieve this goal, after the industrial cold rolling, a heat treatment is proposed with the aim of modifying the morphology and crystallographic texture of the ferritic grains by the assistance of an enforced transformation to sigma phase. The final product obtained by this modified route showed a microstructure with grains of austenite and ferrite randomly distributed and a significant decrease of the texture intensities due to the retransformation of sigma into ferrite. As a result, DSS EN 1.4462 displayed an almost isotropic mechanical behavior and an improved aptitude to deep drawing operations.