42nd International Deep Drawing Research Group Conference - IDDRG 2023

A medium Mn steel was fabricated by employing a vacuum induction furnace. After that, the steel was hot rolled in order to achieve a final thickness of 1.5 mm. The resultant microstructure of the sheet was composed of martensite and very little amount of austenite, the ultimate tensile strength in this condition was close to 1600 MPa with a negligible elongation. An intercritical annealing was designed and proposed to promote the austenite reversion and to increase the amount and stability of this phase. Thermodynamic simulations and previous experimental results were used to determine the temperature and time for the heat treatment. After intercritical annealing, the steel exhibited a elongation close to 30% and a UTS close to 1200 MPa. Formability testing was carried out in that condition in order to correlate the microstructural changes experienced by the sheet with the formability results