I think you will gain the best appreciation of the ideas/approaches on this topic by looking at the following references, and any more recent ones that other people can offer :-

G.B. Olsen, M. Cohen, 'A general mechanisim of martensitic nucleation:Part 1. General Concepts and the FCC->HCP transfromation, Met Trans A, vol. 7A, December, 1976, pp1897-1904.

L. Remy, 'Kinetics of strain induced fcc-hcp martensitic transformation', Met Trans A, vol. 8A, February, 1977, pp 253-258.

A model for the fcc->:hcp transformation, its application, and experimental evidence, Met Trans A, vol. 8 A, February, 1977, pp 283- 293.

S. Takaki, H. Nakatsu, and Y. Tokunaga, 'Effcets of austenite grain size on e martensitic transformation in Fe-15mass% Mn alloy, Mat Trans, JIM, vol. 34, no. 6, 1993, pp489-495.

H.J.M Geijselaers and E.S. Perdahioglu, 'Mechanically induced martaensitic transformations as a stress-driven process', Scrpta Mat. vol. 60, 2009, pp 29-31.

Reading these refs. and doing a proper literature review on the topic will aid you the most.

I can offer you a bone that some people have used a thermodynamic approach* to compute thermal effects on this transformation in the system that you are interested in. Related work/ publications by Grassell & Frommeyer  at MPIE in Dusseldorf  on TWIP steels in this respect will be useful for you.

* Modification of Thermocalc.

Prof. B.C. De Cooman when he was at Ghent Uni also had a few PhD students working in this area, I think he has maintained his interest after his move to Postech in South Korea. He could be a useful contact [email protected] for you.

However, I don't think anybody will be able to give you a definitive answer, I think you might find  just cobbled together empirical models, some nod to stress, thermodynamics, etc., but the matter is linked to stacking fault of the alloy (ISFE), as many people have discussed, in addition to the ones I have already mentioned, search for  R.P. Read Jnl. Of Metals March 1989, p16. I.A. Yakubtsov, A. Ariapour, D.D. Perovic, in Act Mat 1999, and Material Science Forum. B. Jiang, X. Qi, S Yang, W. Zhou and T.Y Hsu, Acta Mat, 1998, Q. Dai, R. Yang, K. Chen, Mat Char 1999.

Dealing with nucleation adequately is perhaps the most problematic area in phase transformation theory, and martensitic transformations are perhaps more difficult than other types of transformation because of its mechanical/stress/dislocation features. Prof. Harry Bhadeshia and his Cambridge/Postech students IIRC have dabbled in this area, and their theses are usually openly available. This will add to your background knowledge.

Now if you you are looking at models/theory for  the epsilon martensite nucleii/nucleation, then you've got still even more reading to do, and again you will find a variety of different models have been proposed. Take your pick !

thanks

Dear John Butler and dear Volker Klemm i read them carefully.