Study on thermal deformation behavior and microstructure evolution of P550 high nitrogen austenitic stainless steel

Abstract The high nitrogen austenitic stainless steel is widely used as power generation and geological exploration equipment materials because of its excellent strength, corrosion resistance and non-magnetic. In this paper, the mechanical behavior and microstructure evolution of P550 steel in the range of 900 °C–1200 °C and 0.001–10 s −1 deformation conditions were studied by physical and heat treatment simulations, metallographic observations and thermal processing maps. The results showed that the flow curves quickly reach the peak and then soften to a steady state, which indicates dynamic recrystallization (DRX) behavior. DRX is easy to occur when the deformation temperature is above 1080 °C. The activation energy of the forged P550 stainless steel was calculated as 519 kJ mol −1 . There is a positive correlation between the peak stress, DRX critical stress, strain and Z value of the tested steel. The instability of the tested steel is easy to produce in the high strain rate region and low temperature region during hot working. Crack germinates and expands preferentially at the ‘necklace structure’ of inadequate dynamic recrystallization. Under the deformation state of 0.001 s −1 , coarse crystals and mixed crystals are easily emerged during subsequent heat treatment. Combining the hot working map, the maximum deformation resistance and the grain evolution behavior during hot working and heat treatment, the suggested working window is T = 1020 °C–1200 °C and έ = 0.01–1 s −1 .