Due to high production rates and the possibility to form complex geometries roll forming has become an increasingly popular forming process for sheet metal. Increasing quantities of high strength steels are used today but can be difficult to form due to their low ductility. One way to partly overcome this problem is to heat the steel in the forming area thus locally increasing the ductility. In the present study partially heated cold rolled high strength AISI 301 type austenitic stainless steel was investigated using electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD), and the results were compared to microhardness measurements. The results show that partial heating will give an almost complete reverse martensite transformation, i.e. martensite (α′) transforms to austenite (γ), close to the surfaces and grain growth in the middle of the steel sheet. The extension of the heat affected zone can be determined using either microhardness or EBSD measurements. Both these measurements can be used to determine the position of the neutral layer after roll forming. The hardness measurement cannot distinguish between microstructural features but the results are in good agreement with the EBSD results for volume fraction of α′-martensite. A major advantage of using EBSD is the possibility to characterize and follow the microstructural development when heating and roll forming.

Material characterization is of great importance for example to improve and further develop physically based models for predicting the microstructural evolution in steels during and after hot deformation. The aim of this study was to characterize the microstructure evolution during wire rod rolling of an austenitic stainless steel of type AISI 304L in a wire rod block, consisting of eight pairs of rolls, using electron backscatter diffraction. The investigation showed that the grain size in the center of the bar decreases during the first four passes. The grain size decrease from 6.5 μm after the first roll pass down to 2 μm, and only small changes was measured in the overall grain size during the last four passes. The subgrain size adopts an almost constant size of 0.9 μm from the second until the fifth roll pass. During the first 3 passes almost no recrystallization is observed and strain accumulates. Partial recrystallization then starts and for the last 3 passes the recrystallization is almost complete and the texture is nearly random.

Specimens from split Hopkinson pressure bar experiments, at strain rates between ~ 1000–9000 s^{− 1} at room temperature and 500 �C, have been studied using electron backscatter diffraction. No significant differences in the microstructures were observed at different strain rates, but were observed for different strains and temperatures. Size distribution for subgrains with boundary misorientations > 2� can be described as a bimodal lognormal area distribution. The distributions were found to change due to deformation. Part of the distribution describing the large subgrains decreased while the distribution for the small subgrains increased. This is in accordance with deformation being heterogeneous and successively spreading into the undeformed part of individual grains. The variation of the average size for the small subgrain distribution varies with strain but not with strain rate in the tested interval. The mean free distance for dislocation slip, interpreted here as the average size of the distribution of small subgrains, displays a variation with plastic strain which is in accordance with the different stages in the stress-strain curves. The rate of deformation hardening in the linear hardening range is accurately calculated using the variation of the small subgrain size with strain.

Plastic deformation of surface grains has been observed by electron backscatter diffraction technique during in situ tensile testing of a high-nickel austenitic stainless steel. The evolution of low- and high-angle boundaries as well as the orientation changes within individual grains has been studied. The number of low-angle boundaries and their respective misorientation increases with increasing strain and some of them also evolve into high-angle boundaries leading to grain fragmentation. The annealing twin boundaries successively lose their integrity with increasing strain. The changes in individual grains are characterized by an increasing spread of orientations and by grains moving towards more stable orientations with < 111 > or < 001 > parallel to the tensile direction. No deformation twins were observed and deformation was assumed to be caused by dislocation slip only.

The microstructure evolution in both surface and bulk grains in a pure Fe-19Cr-12Ni alloy has been analyzed using electron backscatter diffraction after tensile testing interrupted at different strains. Surface grains were studied during in situ tensile testing performed in a scanning electron microscope, whereas bulk grains were studied after conventional tensile testing. The evolution of the deformation structure in surface and bulk grains displays a strong resemblance but the strain needed to obtain a similar deformation structure is lower in the case of surface grains. Both slip and twinning are observed to be important deformation mechanisms, whereas deformation-induced martensite formation is of minor importance. Since the stacking fault energy (SFE) is low, ~17 mJ/m², dynamic recovery by cross slip of un-dissociated dislocations is unfavorable. This reduces the annihilation of dislocations which in turn leads to a significant increase of low angle boundaries with increasing strain. The low SFE also favors formation of deformation twins which reduces the slip distance, leading to a hardening similar to the Hall-Petch relation. The combination of a low ability for cross-slip and a reduced slip distance caused by twinning is concluded to be the main reason for maintaining a high strain-hardening rate up to strains close to necking.