Numerical investigation of the interaction between the martensitic transformation front and the plastic strain in austenite

Phase-field simulations of the martensitic transformation (MT) in an austenitic matrix which has already undergone the plastic deformation are carried out. For this purpose the elasto-plastic phase-field approach of incoherent MT developed in a previous work [Kundin et al., 2011. A phase-field model for incoherent martensitic transformations including plastic accommodation processes in the austenite. J. Mech. Phys. Solids 59, 2082–2012] is used. The evolution equation for the dislocation density field is extended by taking into account the thermal and athermal annihilation of the dislocations in the austenitic matrix and the athermal annihilation at the transformation front. It is shown that the plastic deformation in the austenite caused by the MT interacts with the dislocation field and the MT front that leads to an inhomogeneous increasing of the total dislocation density. During the phase transformation one part of the dislocations in the austenite is inherited by the martensitic phase and this inheritance depends on the kinetics and the crystallography of MT. Another part of dislocations annihilates at the transformation front and decreases the dislocation density in the growing martensite. Based on the simulation results the specific type of phenomenological dependency between the inherited dislocations, the martensite phase fraction and the plastic deformation is proposed. •Phase-field simulations of the martensitic transformation (MT) with the plastic deformation.•The evolution of a dislocation field is treated using the model of thermally activated dislocation motion.•The dislocations in the austenite are inherited by the martensitic phase or annihilate at the transformation front.