Crystallography of lath martensite and stabilization of retained austenite

TEM was used to study the morphology and crystallography of lath martensite in low and medium carbon steels in the as-quenched and 200/sup 0/C tempered conditions. The steels have microduplex structures of dislocated lath martensite and continuous thin films of retained austenite at the lath interfaces. Stacks of laths form the packets which are derived from different (111) variants of the same austenite grain. The residual parent austenite enables microdiffraction experiments with small electron beam spot sizes for the orientation relationships (OR) between austenite and martensite. All three most commonly observed ORs, namely Kurdjumov-Sachs, Nishiyama-Wassermann, and Greninger-Troiano, operate within the same sample.