Special hot working plastic deformation behavior and microstructure evolution mechanism of single-phase BCC structure AlFeCoNiMo0.2 high-entropy alloy

The single-phase body-centered cubic (BCC) structured high-entropy alloys are considered to be typically difficult-to-deform processing alloy because they can still crack during hot deformation at high temperatures and low strain rates. However, we found that the hot working formability of this type of alloy is very sensitive to temperature, and there is a unique microscopic transformation. In this paper, the as-cast single-phase BCC-structured AlFeCoNiMo0.2 high-entropy alloy was investigated with the single-pass hot-compression simulation experiment (deformation of 0.6), at temperatures and strain-rate ranges of 900 – 1150 ℃ and 0.001 – 0.1 s−1, respectively. The hot-deformation behavior and microstructure-evolution mechanisms were studied. The Arrhenius constitutive relation model was revised and established. The processing maps of Prasad, Gegel, Malas, and Murty with different instability criteria were constructed. The optimal thermal-processing parameters (temperatures of 1070 – 1150 ℃ and strain rates of 0.001 – 0.1 s−1) were provided. It was great to find that the alloy has a narrow temperature window effect of hot working with the Ruano-Wadsworth-Sherby (R-W-S) deformation-mechanism map established by incorporating the dislocation quantity. The deformation mechanisms of the alloy at 900 °C, 1000 °C, 1050 °C, and 1100 °C were predicted. The single-phase (BCC) structure of the alloy has strong stability during hot deformation. In a narrow range of hot-working temperatures, the microstructure has a necklace-like structure, and its substructure has a strong textured effect, impeding grain-boundary slip. In the optimized processing interval, discontinuous dynamic recrystallization (DDRX) occurs, and the necklace-like structure disappears. The recrystallization mechanism is related to grain-boundary sliding, caused by dislocation sliding. •The processing map under the four instability criteria was constructed, the accurate results were obtained to analyze the hot-forming properties of the alloy.•The reason for the difficulty in hot forming of the AlFeCoNiMo0.2 HEA is the narrow temperature window of the hot-working process.•The dislocation-quantity factor is introduced into the R-W-S deformation mechanism map through the model to obtain its deformation mechanism.