Strengthening contributions of dislocations and twins in warm-rolled TWIP steels

•Due to the favorable carbon solute that promotes planar slip of dislocations, strong dislocation multiplication is maintained at 573 K without the requirement of deformation twinning or low stacking fault energy.•Dislocation strengthening invariably dominates the flow stress of TWIP steels with or without prior warm rolling, contributing more than 50% of the maximum flow stress.•Warm-rolling induced dense dislocations suppress the thickening of twins by impeding the motion of twinning partial dislocations.•Twinning-induced hardening is enhanced by prior warm rolling.•Strain hardening stages B and C may not be solely associated with deformation twinning.