The coarsening effect of SA508-3 steel used as heavy forgings material

Abstract

SA508Gr.3 steel is popularly used to produce core unit of nuclear power reactors due to its outstanding ability of anti-neutron irradiation and good fracture toughness. The forging process takes important role in manufacturing to refine the grain size and improve the material properties. But due to their huge size, heavy forgings cannot be cooled down quickly, and the refined grains usually have long time to grow in high temperature conditions. If the forging process is not adequately scheduled or implemented, very large grains up to millimetres in size may be found in this steel and cannot be eliminated in the subsequent heat treatment. To fix the condition which may causes the coarsening of the steel, hot upsetting experiments in the industrial production environment were performed under different working conditions and the corresponding grain sizes were measured and analysed. The observation showed that the grain will abnormally grow if the deformation is less than a critical value. The strain energy takes a critical role in the grain evolution. If dynamic recrystallization consumes the strain energy as much as possible, the normal grains will be obtained. While if not, the stored strain energy will promote abnormal growth of the grains.