Ring rolling is an incremental bulk forming process. Hence, the process consists of a large number of alternating deformations and dwell steps. For accurate calculations of material flow and thus ring geometry and rolling forces in hot ring rolling processes, it seems necessary to consider material softening due to static and post dynamic recrystallization which could occur between two deformation steps. In addition, due to the large number of cycles, the modeling results, especially the prediction of grain size, can easily be affected by uncertainties in the input data. However, for small rings and ring material with slow recrystallization kinetics, the interpass times can be short compared to the softening kinetics and the effect of softening can be so small, that microstructure evolution and the description of the materials flow behavior can be de-coupled.
In this paper, a semi-empirical JMAK-based model for a stainless steel (1.4301/ X5CrNi18-9/ AISI304) is presented and evaluated by the use of experiments and other investigations published in [1],[2]. Finite Element (FE) simulations of a ring rolling process with a high number of ring revolutions and thus multiple, incremental forming steps were conducted based on ring rolling experiments. The FE simulation results were validated with the experimentally derived rolling force and evolution of ring diameter. The microstructure evolution was calculated in a post processing step considering the investigated evolution of strain and temperature. In this calculation the interrelations between the fraction of dynamically recrystallized microstructure, the evolution of post-dynamically recrystallized microstructure and the final grain size have been considered. Both, the calculated final microstructure and the evolution of rolling force and ring geometry calculated stand in good agreement with the experimental investigations.
FE Simulation of Microstructure Evolution during Ring Rolling Process of INCONEL Alloy 783