Dynamic recrystallization microstructures under hot working conditions

The characteristics of high temperature flow curves and evolution of new grain structures under conditions of dynamic recrystallization (DRX) are reviewed, together with the associated development of dislocation substructures. It is shown that the type of DRX taking place depends on the relative grain size Do/Ds, where and Do and Ds are the initial and stable dynamic grain sizes, and also on the nature of dispersion particles. These can be attributed to that dynamic nucleation occurs mainly at or near existing grain boundaries, and dynamic growth is controlled by not only the temperature corrected strain rate Z, but also dispersion particles. The work softening accompanied with DRX results from a change in the substructural nature from homogeneous. The dislocation substructures under full DRX are classified into the three categories: (i) DRX nuclei, (ii) growing DRX grains containing a dislocation density gradient, and (iii) large DRX grains with fairly homogeneous substructure. Finally, the metadynamic or post-dynamic restoration processes taking place in the DRX matrices are reviewed. The static softening-annealing time curve observed after DRX consists of three distinct stages with the respective inflection plateaus, followed by incomplete softening (stage 1,2 and 3). The rate of grain growth at stage 3 is much lower than that of normal grain growth. These can be caused by the stable existence of growing DRX grains having many-sided irregular shapes as well as high density dislocations.