Microstructural development during mechanical forming of steel sheets

Metal forming is used synonymously with deformation, a process during which an object gets changed due to the applied force. These changes can either be reversible or irreversible depending on the type of material; size and geometry of the object and the magnitude of the applied force to the object. This paper reports the microstructural development after mechanical forming of steel sheet material by varying the applied loads. The microstructural evaluations showed that the applied loads employed caused an increase in the magnitude of the grain sizes in each loaded specimen. Furthermore, the increase in the grain size of the microstructure was observed to be directly proportional to the loads applied. In addition, the microhardness values of the cross sections investigated were found to increase with the applied loads. Hence, the grain size growth and the hardness were linearly dependent on the applied loads, and this implies that there is a correlation between the applied loads and the resulting microstructure of the material and the hardness of the material