Enhancement effect of inter-pass annealing during equal channel angular pressing on grain refinement and ductility of 9Cr1Mo steel

To obtain enhanced mechanical property in both the strength and the ductility, 9Cr1Mo steel (T91) was severely deformed by equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) combined with an additional inter-pass annealing. Tensile results show that the additional inter-pass annealing can significantly improve the ductility (i.e. 18% of the total elongation after four-pass extrusion with the inter-pass annealing) but slightly decrease the tensile strength comparing with the case without the inter-pass annealing (i.e. 10% of the total elongation after four-pass ECAP processing). The average grain size of the two passes ECAP-processed materials with the inter-pass annealing (~0.8 µm) is smaller than that of the sample without inter-pass annealing (~2 µm), and the fraction of the high angle grain boundaries in the samples with the inter-pass annealing (~40%) is higher than that of ~34% (two-pass ECAP) without the inter-pass annealing based on electron backscattering diffraction analysis. The crystallite size and dislocation density were evaluated by means of the modified Williamson-Hall plot based on X-ray diffraction analysis. The microstructural analysis indicates that the enhanced ductility of the ECAP processed and inter-pass annealed materials can be attributed to the relatively smaller grain sizes, larger crystallite sizes and lower dislocation densities.