HIGH-TEMPERATURE DEFORMATION BEHAVIOR AND HOT-PROCESSING MAP OF 25CrMo4 AXLE STEEL BASED ON FRICTION CORRECTION

The deformation behavior and microstructure of 25CrMo4 axle steel was systematically investigated by thermal compression deformation. The hot-compression test of a 25CrMo4 axle steel sample was carried out on a Gleeble-3800 thermal mechanical simulation tester. The flow behavior of the alloy was studied at the deformation temperature (900–1200 °C), strain rates (0.01; 0.1; 1.0) s–1 and the maximum deformation of 60 %. The flow curves under different deformation conditions were obtained, and the effects of the deformation temperature and strain rate on the appearance of the flow curves are discussed. The true stress-strain curve obtained by experiment is modified by friction. Based on the corrected experimental data, the activation energy determined by the regression analysis was Q = 311 kJ/mol, and the constitutive model was constructed. The high-temperature flow behavior of the 25CrMo4 axle steel was described by the Zener-Hollomon parameter. The optimum hot-deformation process parameters were determined based on the hot processing maps, followed by the analysis of the microstructure characteristics of the alloys under optimum hot working. The results show that the suitable hot-deformation process parameters of the alloy are as follows: deformation temperature is 1050–1200 °C, and strain rate is 0.01 s–1 to 0.14 s–1.