Regularities of Grain Refinement in an Austenitic Stainless Steel during Multiple Warm Working

The structural changes that are related to the new fine grain development in a chromium-nickel austenitic stainless steel subjected to warm working by means of multiple forging and multiple rolling were studied. The multiple warm working to a total strain of 2 at temperatures of 500-900C resulted in the development of submicrocrystalline structures with mean grain sizes of 300-850 nm, depending on processing conditions. The new fine grains resulted mainly from a kind of continuous reactions, which can be referred to as continuous dynamic recrystallization. Namely, the new grains resulted from a progressive evolution of strain-induced grain boundaries, the number and misorientation of which gradually increased during deformation. In contrast to hot working accompanied by discontinuous dynamic recrystallization, when the dynamic grain size can be expressed by a power law function of temperature compensated strain rate as D ~ Z -0.4 , much weaker temperature/strain rate dependence of D ~ Z -0.1 was obtained for the warm working.