Workability of High-Strength Automobile Steel at High Temperatures Using Hot Processing Maps and Electron Backscatter Diffraction

Hot deformation behavior of a high-strength steel Docol 1500 Bor was investigated by compression tests on a thermal–mechanical simulator Gleeble 3500. The workability of tested steel was analyzed by building processing maps at three strains based on the test results of flow stresses. The essential deformation mechanism was further studied based on the deformation texture analysis on a scanning electronic microscope with a TSL-OIM™EBSD system. It was found that that strain can affect the workability of the tested steel remarkably. At the engineering strain of 0.6, obvious textures in martensite mainly include recrystallization textures <110>//ND and other texture components <110>//RD and {001} <100>, etc. Dynamic recrystallization and recrystallization texture component <111>//ND in deformed austenite can contribute to increasing the workability of a steel Docol 1500 Bor. Finally, the optimized deformation conditions of the tested steel were obtained.