Martensite steel is induced from pearlitic steel by a newly discovered method, which is completely different from the traditional route of quenching austenitic steel. Both experimental and theoretical studies demonstrate that Fe-C martensite forms by severe deformation at room temperature. The new mechanism identified here opens a paths to material-design strategies based on deformation-driven nanoscale phase transformations.
Keywords: X-ray diffraction; ab initio modelling; atom-probe tomography; cold-drawn pearlitic steel wires; deformation-induced martensite.
© 2016 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.