Computational Exploration of Microstructural Evolution in a Medium C-Mn Steel and Applications to Rod Mill

Abstract

An ‘Expert System’ is proposed in this work to conduct computational exploration of the deformation and restoration behaviour of a medium C-Mn steel under high strain rate conditions, at elevated temperatures and complex strain paths that occur in rod rolling process. The expert system computes appropriate thermomechanical parameters necessary for describing rod rolling process in detail and then utilizes these parameters in mathematical models to determine microstructure evolution during a typical industrial-scale rod rolling process. Microstructure simulation in rod rolling is a challenging problem due to the fact that several softening processes may operate sequentially or concurrently during each deformation step. Different softening processes have very different impact on microstructure development and therefore it is important to investigate the particular combinations of processing conditions under which transition of operating softening processes occurs. In the present work, the transition from dynamic to metadynamic recrystallization is studied in detail based on the criteria of critical strain, austenite grain size and Zener-Hollomon parameter when the interpass (interdeformation) time is very short of the order of few milliseconds during the later stages of rod rolling. Computational results are subsequently validated by comparing the program output to in-plant measured microstructure data. The proposed expert system is designed as an off-line simulation tool to examine and assess the various options for thermomechanical process optimization.