Correlating Microstructural Features and Surface Roughening in Ferritic Stainless Steel

The surface ridging behaviour during tensile straining has been characterised for two ferritic stainless steels possessing different austenite potentials (0.1 and 0.6 respectively). Microstructural and texture heterogeneities have been detected to different levels in each steel and are used to explain the extent of surface ridging by considering a ridging mechanism arising from differential transverse strains. Orientation images are presented to trace the development of orientation clusters during recrystallisation.