Karin Yvell

Microstructure Evolution in an Austenitic Stainless Steel during Wire Rolling

A wire rod block at Fagersta Stainless AB, Sweden, consists of eight pairs of rolls with consecutive round-oval-round grooves. Test bars of an austenitic stainless steel of type AISI 304L that had been preheated to 930±70°C were manually fed into the wire block. By entering a guide after one of the roll pair, the bar was led out from the block into a water-filled tube for rapid quenching. The guide was moved successively from the first to the last pair of rolls and test bars were collected after each roll pair. In order to characterize the original structure one bar was preheated and directly water quenched without rolling. The aim of this study was to characterize the microstructure evolution during the wire rod rolling using electron backscatter diffraction. The size evolution for all grains, the recrystallized grains and for the subgrains in the deformed grains has been estimated and the fraction of recrystallized grains has been determined. During the first 3 passes almost no recrystallization is observed and strain accumulates. Partial recrystallization then occurs and for the last 3 passes the recrystallization is almost complete and the texture is nearly random.

Modeling microstructure development during hot working of an austenitic stainless steel

A number of physically based models are combined in order to predict microstructure development during hot deformation. The models treat average values for the generation and recovery of vacancies and dislocations, recrystallization and grain growth and the dissolution and precipitation of second phase particles. The models are applied to a number of laboratory experiments made on 304 austenitic stainless steel and the model parameters are adjusted from those used for low alloyed steel mainly in order to obtain the right kinetics for the influence of solute drag on climb of dislocations and on grain growth. The thermodynamic data are obtained using Thermo-Calc© to create solubility products for the possible secondary phases. One case of wire rolling has been analyzed mainly concerning the evolution of recrystallization and grain size. The time, temperature and strain history has been derived using process information. The models are shown to give a fair description of the microstructure development during hot working of the studied austenitic stainless steel.

A microstructural investigation of roll formed austenitic stainless steel

Due to high production rates and the possibility to form complex geometries roll forming has become an increasingly popular forming process for sheet metal. Increasing quantities of high strength steels are used today but can be difficult to form due to their low ductility. One way to partly overcome this problem is to heat the steel in the forming area thus locally increasing the ductility. In the present study partially heated cold rolled high strength AISI 301 type austenitic stainless steel was investigated using electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD), and the results were compared to microhardness measurements. The results show that partial heating will give an almost complete reverse martensite transformation, i.e. martensite (α ́) transforms to austenite (γ), close to the surfaces and grain growth in the middle of the steel sheet. The extension of the heat affected zone can be determined using either microhardness or EBSD measurements. Both these measurements can be used to determine the position of the neutral layer after roll forming. The hardness measurement cannot distinguish between microstructural features but the results are in good agreement with the EBSD results for volume fraction of α ́-martensite. A major advantage of using EBSD is the possibility to characterize and follow the microstructural development when heating and roll forming.