Cold drawn steel wires—processing, residual stresses and ductility — Part II: Synchrotron and neutron diffraction.

International audienceCold drawing of steel wires leads to an increase of their mechanical strength and to a drop in their ductility. The increase of their mechanical strength has long been related to the reduction of the various material scales by an intense plastic deformation. Besides, it was discussed in the companion paper that large plastic deformation leads to the loss of the material hardening capabilities and that, in such a case, residual stresses preserve the elongation to failure of wires. Experimental measurements of residual stresses inside the wire have therefore been undertaken. In this paper, lattice parameters as measured using synchrotron diffraction are compared with those calculated using the residual stress fields as determined by the finite-element method. There is a major disagreement between experimental and numerical results that is too large to be attributed to the errors of the finite-element analyses. Therefore, neutron diffraction experiments have also been performed. These measurements show that there is a significant variation of the lattice parameter with the drawing level, which is not inherited from residual stresses, and that variation is very sensitive to the cooling rate after processing. It is therefore proposed that cold drawing would induce a phase transformation of the steel, possibly a martensitic transformation