Investigation of flow behaviour and microstructure on X210CrW12 steel in semi-solid state

This paper describes the basic investigation on material behaviour of cold working steel X210CrW12 in semi-solid state concerning the semi-solid forging. It includes a study of flow behaviour and microstructure by means of a high temperature isothermal upsetting test applying a special cylinder sample with a shell, which is designed to avoid collapsing of samples during the compression. The flow curve of the semi-solid steel is determined by an inverse modelling via FEM using the obtained load curve of the samples and the separately obtained flow stress of the shell material. An extensive microstructure study of the compressed samples provides a comprehensive understanding on the flow mechanism of the semi-solid steel. At the end of the paper some general restrictions and remarks for the semi-solid forging process are given based on the gained results.