1. Introduction
Pearlite is the base or a substantial structure constituent of many high strength steels. As one of them, spring
steel 60Si2MnA is often hard drawn into a wire and then coiled into springs by hot deformation, or increasingly
directly manufactured into springs by cold deformation (Ai et al., 2003; Ai et al., 2005). The required
microstructure of the steel is the thin interlamellar spacing, small pearlite colony and less free ferrite bulk volume.
In spite of the relatively simple microstructure of pearlite and many studies of its properties, strain hardening is far
from being understood.