Flow Stress Analysis and Hot Bending of P11 Alloy Steel

Based on the growing application value of the P11 alloy steel in the nuclear power field, its dynamic recrystallization (DRX) behavior was firstly investigated by means of isothermal hot compression experiments, under the conditions of a testing temperature range between 800 and 950 °C, and a strain rate range between 0.01 and 2/s. Furthermore, optical microscopy and transmission electron microscopy were also employed to analyze the effect of the mechanism of the strain rate on DRX. The results indicated that the grain size could be significantly refined with the increase of strain rate. Also, the recrystallized volume fraction was increased and the dislocation density decreased with the decrease of strain rate, for the same strain values. Subsequently, numerical simulations, under the assistance of experimental results on DRX behavior, were successfully used to study the hot push bending process and simultaneously obtain the processing parameters of the actual work-pieces. Finally, some comparative analyses were performed and discussed in parallel with the deformed actual work-pieces. The EBSD results on the deformed P11 alloy steel were emphasized for exploring the forming properties of this alloy steel.