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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Subgrain refinement strengthening. Annual report, October 1, 1974--September 30, 1975

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:7338024

Investigations were conducted to develop fine subgrains in selected ferritic and austenitic alloys as a possible means of enhancing the creep resistance of such materials. The model systems selected for testing during the report period include an austenitic stainless steel (type 304) and a ferritic stainless steel (26 chromium, 1 molybdenum). Results of tests indicate the strong effect that subgrain refinement may have on the high temperature properties of materials when subgrain strengthening dominates the deformation process. Since subgrain formation is a dominant structural feature of iron base alloys after warm deformation it is clearly worth-while to quantify the possible influence of subgrain size on the creep rate of austenitic and ferritic stainless steels. It was found that the flow stress, sigma, is a function of the subgrain size, lambda, following the relation sigma varies as lambda/sup -0/./sup 35/. It was possible to predict that 304 stainless steel can be increased in strength by a factor of 2.7 over the normally expected strength at 650/sup 0/C and epsilon = 10/sup -10/s/sup -1/ (i.e., a one year rupture life) if stable subgrains 0.2 ..mu..m in size can be developed. It is postulated that the dislocations within the subgrain boundary in 26 Cr--1 Mo steel take on a more perfect ordered array with strain; it is then suggested that a well ordered array may be a poor barrier to plastic flow at warm temperature (where dislocation climb is rate controlling) but is a good barrier at low temperature (where dislocations must break through the subgrain boundary barrier).

Research Organization:
Stanford Univ., Calif. (USA). Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
OSTI ID:
7338024
Report Number(s):
SU-326P38X5
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English