Microstructural path analysis of athermal martensite

The martensite reaction is a heterogeneous transformation that starts in a few austenite grains and proceeds by nucleation of additional martensite units in the partially transformed grains as well as in untransformed ones, thus spreading the transformation throughout the material. In this work, the “spread” of the martensite reaction is modeled with the help of microstructural path analysis. The theoretical model shows good agreement with experimental data from Fe–31 wt.% Ni–0.01 wt.% C with different starting grain sizes and with data from small particles of Fe–30 wt.% Ni.