Heat treatment strengthens austenitic manganese steel so that it can be used safely and reliably in a wide variety of engineering applications. Solution annealing and quenching, the standard treatment that produces normal tensile properties and the desired toughness, involves austenitizing followed quickly by water quenching. Variations of this treatment can be used to enhance specific desired properties such as yield strength and abrasion resistance.

Usually, a fully austenitic structure, essentially free of carbides and reasonably homogeneous with respect to carbon and manganese, is desired in the as-quenched condition, although this is not always attainable in heavy sections or in steels containing carbide-forming elements such as chromium, molybdenum, vanadium and titanium. If carbides exist in the as-quenched structure, it is desirable for them to be present as relatively innocuous particles or nodules within the austenite grains rather than as continuous envelopes at grain boundaries.