Constitutive Analysis of Stress-Strain Curves of a High-Nitrogen Austenitic Stainless Steel

The Ni content in the conventional austenitic stainless steel tends to be lowered by alloying of high amount of N so that the production cost can be significantly reduced. In this paper, the flow stress curves for a high-nitrogen alloyed stainless steel of 1Cr22Mn15N were investigated by the thermo-mechanical simulator, which show typical characteristics of appearance of dynamic recrystallization. Besides, a numerical model based on Zener-Holloman parameter has been established to simulate the flow stress curves with quite good agreement. It was found that the activation energy for 1Cr22Mn15N is much more than that for the other 300 series stainless steels possible, indicating that strengthening resulting from interstitial solution of N atoms is stronger that for substitutional solution of other elements.