Microstructure and mechanical properties of friction stir processed ODS ferritic steels

Oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) steels are considered to be one of the candidate structural materials for advanced blanket systems because of its excellent properties in fusion environments. For more applications of the ODS steels to fusion systems with a huge and complex structure, development of joining technologies is a key issue to be solved. To reserve nano-oxide particles in the matrix homogeneously, the friction stir welding (FSW) is a suitable way to get good welding characteristics as a solid-state processing technique. In this research, effects of friction stir processing (FSP) on microstructure and mechanical properties of a ODS steel were studied to apply FSW process to ODS steels. The microstructure of FSPed ODS steel consists of stirred zone (SZ) and base metal (BM), as reported for other ferritic steels. Although equiaxed grain coarsening occurred through dynamic recrystallization during FSP, the nano-oxide particles in SZ showed fewer change in the size distribution. This resulted that FSP is effective to suppress the anisotropy and minimize the change of nano-oxide particles dispersion morphologies of ODS steel.