A Study on Deformation Behavior of 304L Stainless Steel During and After Plate Rolling at Elevated Temperatures

In this work, microstructural evolutions and mechanical properties of AISI 304L stainless steel were studied after rolling operations at elevated temperatures. Rolling experiments were conducted under warm and hot rolling conditions in the range of 600-1000 A degrees C employing different reductions. Then, the developed microstructures and the mechanical properties of the steel were evaluated by means of uniaxial tensile testing, metallographic observations, and x-ray diffraction method. Besides, two-dimensional finite element analysis coupled with artificial neural network modeling was developed to assess thermo-mechanical behavior of the steel during and after rolling. The results show that inhomogeneities in strain and temperature distributions are reduced under warm rolling conditions. Static recrystallization can be operative under hot rolling conditions and relatively low reduction, i.e., reduction of 25%. However, for the case of higher reductions, the rate of recrystallization decreases considerably owing to severe temperature drop in the plate being rolled. Furthermore, the rolled plates show negative strain rate sensitivity while this phenomenon is affected by the rolling temperature.