Abstract
The fracture behavior was investigated of a bulk nanostructured 316L austenitic stainless steel with embedded nanotwin bundles incorporated by dynamic plastic deformation. The nanotwin bundles were demonstrated to be critical to strengthen and toughen the as-deformed samples with mixed microstructures of nano-grains and nano-twins. With increment in strength, the fracture toughness decreases due to the generation of increasingly more nano-grains. Additional controlled thermal annealing that makes the nano-grains recover or recrystallize leads to reduced strengths but more remarkably improved fracture toughness. The enhanced strength−fracture toughness synergy can be attributed to the nanotwin bundles that constrict the damage development in the matrix of either nano-grains or recrystallized grains, and that resist crack propagation via acting as ductile crack bridging ligaments.
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