<p>Some researchers report that the deformation and strain-induced martensitic transformation (SIMT) behavior in type 304 austenitic stainless steel (SUS304 in JIS), which is a kind of transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) steel, strongly depends on the strain rate. At a higher level of strain rate, the inelastic work contributes significantly to a temperature rise. As a result, the saturation of volume fraction of martensite can be observed. In addition, the temperature distribution in the smaller volume of the steel is very close to a homogeneous state at higher strain rate, although the volume includes the crystal grains with the inhomogeneous deformation. However, the effect of the size on the temperature distribution has rarely been considered even if the crystal plasticity models are coupled with a temperature field. In this study, at first, a heat conduction equation with the latent heat induced by SIMT is derived based on the thermodynamics within the framework of crystal plasticity. Then, the finite element simulation based on a combination of both crystal plasticity and cellular automata on SIMT in a unit cell model of polycrystal SUS304 is performed at different strain rates by coupling with the temperature field. As similar to the previous work, the Voronoi polygon and the periodic boundary conditions are chosen to express the geometrical shape of grains directly in the infinite polycrystalline medium. In the computational results, the thermally suppressed SIMT at higher strain rate can be found successfully.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>