Martensitic Transformation during Fatigue Testing of an AISI 301LN Stainless Steel

The plastic deformation accumulated during fatigue testing can induce the transformation of austenite to martensite in metastable austenitic stainless steels. To analyze this issue, a metastable austenitic stainless steel grade AISI 301 LN was studied in two different conditions, i.e. annealed and cold rolled. In the first case, the steel was fully austenitic, whereas cold rolled material had almost 30% of martensite. High cycle fatigue tests at a stress ratio of 0.8 were carried out on flat specimens from both steel conditions. Several characterization techniques, including optical microscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and electron back scattered diffraction (EBSD), were used to detect and quantify the martensite induced by the cyclic deformation.