Hot Workability of Ultra-Supercritical Rotor Steel Using a 3-D Processing Map Based on the Dynamic Material Model

As a new-type of ultra-supercritical HI-IP rotor steel, X12CrMoWVNbN10-1-1 alloy steel has excellent integrative performance, which can effectively improve the power generation efficiency of the generator set. In this paper, uniaxial thermal compression tests were carried out over a temperature range of 950–1200 °C and strain rates of 0.05–5 s(−1) with a Gleeble-1500D thermal simulation testing machine. Moreover, based on hot compression experimental data and the theory of processing diagrams, in combination with the dynamic material model, a three-dimensional (3-D) thermal processing map considering the effect of strain was constructed. It was concluded that optimum thermal deformation conditions were as follows: the temperature range of 1150–1200 °C, the strain rate range of 0.05–0.634 s(−1). Through secondary development of the finite element (FE) software FORGE(®), three-dimensional thermal processing map data were integrated into finite element software FORGE(®). The distributions of instability coefficient and power dissipation coefficient were obtained over various strain rates and temperatures of the Ø 8 × 12 mm cylinder specimen by using finite element simulation. It is shown that simulation results are consistent with the microstructure photos. The method proposed in this paper, which integrates the three-dimensional processing map into the finite element software FORGE(®) (Forge NxT 2.1, Transvalor, Nice, France), can effectively predict the formability of X12CrMoWVNbN10-1-1 alloy steel.