We present a systematic investigation on the strain hardening and texture evolution in
high manganese steels where twinning induced plasticity (TWIP) plays a significant role
for the materials' plastic deformation. Motivated by the stress–strain behavior of typical
TWIP steels with compositions of Fe, Mn, and C, we develop a mechanistic model to
explain the strain-hardening in crystals where deformation twinning dominates the
plastic deformation. The classical single crystal plasticity model accounting for both
dislocation slip and deformation twinning are then employed to simulate the plastic
deformation in polycrystalline TWIP steels. While only deformation twinning is activated
for plasticity, the simulations with samples composed of voronoi grains cannot fully
capture the texture evolution of the TWIP steel. By including both twinning deformation
and dislocation slip, the model is able to capture both the stress–strain behaviors and the
texture evolution in Fe–Mn–C TWIP steel in different boundary-value problems. Further
analysis on the strain contributions by both mechanisms suggests that deformation
twinning plays the dominant role at the initial stage of plasticity in TWIP steels, and
dislocation slip becomes increasingly important at large strains.