Nucleation mechanisms of dynamic recrystallization in austenitic steel alloy 800H

Abstract

Many metals and alloys with low and intermediate stacking fault energy undergo dynamic recrystallization (DRX). Due to the growing importance of hot deformation in metal forming there is an increasing interest in the understanding and modeling of microstructure evolution during DRX and its effect on flow behavior. However, despite extensive research in this field and numerous data on a variety of materials the physical understanding of DRX still remains very qualitative. Especially the nucleation of DRX lacks a detailed physical understanding and experimental evidence, due to the difficulties of investigating the micromechanisms of dynamic processes during high temperature deformation. The improved techniques of single grain orientation measurements by using EBSD (electron backscatter diffraction) in the SEM allow to measure the local orientation arrangement and thus identify the orientations of individual nuclei. The current report focuses on the examination of the substructure evolution during dynamic recrystallization with particular attention to the role of continuous subgrain rotation or instabilities of the subgrain structure near the grain boundary with regard to nucleation during DRX.