A General Perspective of Fe-Mn-Al-C Steels

TL;DR

This review discusses the unique properties, composition, and processing of Fe-Mn-Al-C steels, highlighting their high strength, ductility, corrosion resistance, and potential industrial applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the complex relationships between composition, processing, and properties of Fe-Mn-Al-C steels, consolidating current knowledge.

Findings

Fe-Mn-Al-C steels achieve ~15% weight reduction compared to conventional steels.

They exhibit high strength (~1 GPa) and ductility (>60%).

Their properties depend on composition, temperature, load, and processing parameters.

Abstract

During the last years, the scientific and industrial community has focused on the astonishing properties of Fe-Mn-Al-C steels. These high advanced steels allow high-density reductions about ~15% lighter than conventional steels, high corrosion resistance, high strength (ultimate tensile strength (UTS) ~1 Gpa) and at the same time ductilities above 60%. The increase of the tensile or yield strength and the ductility at the same time is almost a special feature of this kind of new steels, which makes them so interesting for many applications such as in the automotive, armor and mining industry. The control of these properties depends on a complex relationship between the chemical composition of the steel, the test temperature, the external loads and the processing parameters of the steel. This review has been conceived to tried to elucidate these complex relations and gather the most important aspects of Fe-Mn-Al-C steels developed so far.