Hot Deformation Behavior and Microstructural Evolution of a Medium Carbon Vanadium Microalloyed Steel

Hot forging of steel requires application of large strains, under which conditions, dynamic recrystallization (DRX) is expected to take place. In this study, torsion tests were carried out on a medium carbon vanadium microalloyed steel (38MnSiVS5) to simulate hot forging. Deformations were applied isothermally in the temperature range 900-1200 °C at strain rates of 0.1-10 s−1 in order to observe for the occurrence of DRX and to investigate for the microstructural evolution during straining. The shape of the flow curves indicated that the recrystallization takes place during deformation. This was supported by optical microscopy performed on the quenched samples which displayed considerable amounts of recrystallized grains. It was shown that the grain size depends on straining conditions such as strain rate and temperature. Finally, it was revealed that these process parameters can considerably affect the evolution of microstructure of industrial grade steels by means of DRX.