Stress Response Behavior, Microstructure Evolution and Constitutive Modeling of 22MnB5 Boron Steel under Isothermal Tensile Load

Abstract

22MnB5 boron steel has become one of the main choices for lightweight vehicles due to its extremely high mechanical properties. To explore the intrinsic relationship between the thermoforming process and thermo-mechanical behavior for constitutive modeling and thermoforming of vehicle structure, thermal tensile tests in wide ranges of deformation temperature (500 °C to 950 °C) and strain rate (0.01 s−1 to 10 s−1) were performed using a Gleeble-1500D thermal simulator with hot-rolled 22MnB5 boron steel. With increasing applied strain and strain rate, the flow stress increases gradually and then tends to saturation after reaching peak stress, except for that at 0.01 s−1 and 500 °C. With increasing deformation temperature, the microstructure transforms from a mixture of bainite, ferrite and pearlite to lath-shaped martensite accompanied with some residual austenite. At 950 °C, the average size of martensite decreases with increasing applied strain rate. After thermoforming with austenitizing temperature of 950 °C, lath-shaped martensite accompanied with some residual austenite is obtained in a thermoformed U-shaped structural part, resulting in a dramatical increase in tensile strength. In contrast, the tensile strength of sidewall is slightly higher than that of bottom. Based on the Arrhenius-type constitutive model, a modified constitutive model is constructed with a relative error of less than 5%, which can well describe the flow stress behavior of the studied 22MnB5 boron steel.