Strain Rate Sensitivity Analysis of Duplex and Superduplex Steels in Tensile Tests

Duplex and super duplex stainless steels have high corrosion resistance, excellent mechanical properties, and high impact strength. Such characteristics make these steels able to operate in various segments of the industry, especially in aggressive environments. These alloys have higher strength than austenitic and ferritic stainless steels and their operation is generally restricted to temperatures lower than 300 °C. Most steels and alloys only exhibit elasto-viscoplastic behavior at temperatures higher than 1/3 of the absolute melting temperature. The objective of this work was to make an experimental study showing that the duplex and superduplex steels present a rate-dependent behavior even at room temperature (around 25 °C). Two different alloys: duplex stainless steel UNS 31803F51 and super duplex UNS S32760GRF55 were used in the study. Simple models were proposed to describe how the rate-dependent portion of the stress (called at this paper "the viscous term") depends on the strain rate. A simple procedure to identify experimentally all material constants that appear in the theory is presented. The experimental results are in very good agreement with the model predictions.