Current opinion in medium manganese steel

Medium Mn steels have been actively investigated due to their excellent balance between material cost and mechanical properties. The steels possess a single a9 martensite phase in hot and cold rolled states and multiphases after intercritical annealing. Many studies have focused on investigating the influences of chemical composition and annealing conditions on the microstructure, particularly the grain size and retained γ (γR), and on the tensile properties. The steels exhibit high strength and good ductility due to transformation induced plasticity occurring in γR, whose volume fraction is approximately 0.2-0.4. The present review summarises the important results of previous studies about the effects of both intercritical annealing conditions and alloying elements on the microstructure and tensile properties of medium Mn steels.