Abstract:
The deformation resistance of metals during deformation is influenced by various factors. Among them, the deformation temperature, deformation process, and strain-induced phase transformation all have an impact on the deformation resistance. This article focuses on low carbon micro-Nb steel and conducts thermal compression experiments using a Gleeble-3500 thermal simulation testing machine. Simultaneously, the in-situ high-temperature morphology under conventional hot charging and high-temperature direct rolling was observed by high-temperature laser confocal microscope. The results show that as the deformation temperature increases from 800 ℃ to 1050 ℃, the maximum deformation resistance during high-temperature direct rolling decreases from 220.9 MPa to 138.9 MPa, while the maximum deformation resistance under the conventional hot charging process decreases from 227.9 MPa to 143.8 MPa. It is mainly because when the deformation temperature gradually increases, the thermal activation energy is enhanced, and the movement of dislocation becomes easier, which leads to a decrease in the deformation resistance. In addition, when the deformation temperature is the same, the deformation resistance of the conventional hot charging process is larger than that of the high-temperature direct rolling process. It is due to the original austenite grain size under the conventional hot charging process (98.7 μm) is smaller than that under the high-temperature direct rolling process (107.0 μm). During the cooling process before reheating in the conventional hot charging process, a ferrite phase transformation occurs, and austenitization occurs again after reheating, making the newly formed austenite grains smaller than the original austenite grains. Therefore, the smaller original austenite grain size under the conventional hot charging process leads to the stronger fine-grain strengthening effect, resulting in greater deformation resistance. Additionally, the experimental data of deformation resistance under different rolling processes were fitted and corrected by using the deformation resistance models proposed by Guan Kezhi and Zhou Jihua, and a deformation resistance prediction model for the tested steel during high-temperature deformation was established. The coefficient of determination R2 of the models for the conventional hot charging process and the high-temperature direct rolling process reaches 0.9865 and 0.9826 respectively, indicating a high fitting accuracy between the model's predictions and the experimental results.