Grain Refinement in a Low Carbon Steel Through Multidirectional Forging

Grain refinement is one of the successful and low-cost methods to develop metals having excellent combination of strength and ductility. Low carbon steel was deformed by using multidirectional forging (MDF) technique at room temperature. The influence of strain amount and annealing process on the microstructure and mechanical properties of investigated steel was studied. The grain refinement mechanism was studied by the microstructure observation. The results showed that the grain refinement was attained by multidirectional forging technique. The initial coarser grains of average 38 μm size fragmented into very fine ferrite with grain sizes of about 1. 2 μm. After MDF, the strength properties improved significantly, although uniform elongation and elongation decreased with increasing strain.