Study of hot deformation behaviour of 2205 duplex stainless steel through hot tension tests

The hot working behaviour of duplex stainless steels has been studied in the literature mainly through hot torsion or hot compression tests. The aim of this paper is to investigate the hot deformation behaviour of a duplex stainless steel type 2205 (F51) through hot tension tests, which are easier to carry out and can offer some additional information about the maximum sustainable strain in tension before starting of irreversible damage. In fact, even under the uniaxial compressive action of a forging press, tensile stresses may develop in some zones of the forged product. These zones become most critical and the knowledge of the limiting conditions are important. Three different test temperatures were selected, namely 900 °C, 1000 °C and 1100 °C. The hot working behaviour was characterized by fitting the mean flow stress, strain rate and temperature relationship with the hyperbolic sine function defined by Sellars and Tegart. An activation energy Q equal to 430 kJ/mol was obtained for plastic straining at high temperature. It corresponds to values, obtained with hot torsion or hot compression tests, reported in the literature where a large variation in activation energy is also found for duplex stainless steels. It was explained by considering the intrinsic two-phase nature of the investigated steel. The ductility in the different hot working conditions was characterized by the true strain at the onset of damage formation under prevailing tensile stress conditions. The role of the microstructure as well as of damage formation during deformation on the shape of the flow stress curves was analyzed.