The microstructures of cold work steel includes 16% primary carbides, 16% retained austenite and
martensite after oil quenching or gas quenching. The carbide volume fraction should be determined
by chemical extraction or metallographic methods. Adequate X-ray diffraction peak resolution for
carbide peak identification is required to avoid overlapping carbide peaks in the retained austenite
measurement [4]. Das et al. [5] conducted sub-zero treated AISI D2 experiments and demonstrated
that retained austenite can be reduced by cold treatment. This paper compares the retained austenite
amount determination in the quenched and tempered SKD11 tool steels between the metallographic
and X-ray diffraction measurement methods.