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APPLICATIONS OF THERMO-CALC

Hot Working

Thermo-Calc can be used to calculate phase stability as a function of alloy composition and temperature to provide more accurate estimates for processing windows for hot working.

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Applications to Hot Working

To prevent strain hardening during hot working, which can include hot rolling, extrusion, and forging, it is important to keep alloys above their recrystallization temperature. Temperature windows for hot working are typically chosen to be between 60% of the alloy’s melting temperature up to 50 degrees Celsius below its melting point. This temperature window could be narrowed further by the need to avoid undesirable phase transformations.

Thermo-Calc can be used to calculate phase stability as a function of composition and temperature to provide more accurate estimates for processing windows.

Calculate the following as a function of material chemistry and temperature:

  • Critical transformation temperatures such as A1, A3, solvus temperatures of precipitates, and more
  • Time needed to solutionize segregation from solidification
  • Composition windows that give the widest precipitate-free temperature range
  • Multicomponent phase diagrams for alloys to visualize optimal temperature and chemistry ranges for a process
  • Solutionizing kinetics, namely the time required to dissolve precipitates into the solution phase

Application Examples

Thermo-Calc has many applications to hot working. Below is one such example.

Determining Suitable Forging Temperatures for a 4130 Steel

Typically a material should be hot worked in a single phase region. Precipitates and secondary phases can embrittle the material and cause cracking during forging or rolling. Small chemistry variations, even within a material specification, can lead to unexpected changes in phase transition temperatures and precipitation temperature ranges. Thermo-Calc can predict the phase fractions as a function of temperature for specific chemistries to guide process parameter decisions.

This figure shows the phase fractions as a function of temperature calculated for a 4130 steel. Typical recommendations found in the literature for forging 4130 steel are between 950 °C and 1230 °C. These are consistent with these calculations, which show that 4130 has a wide range of suitable forging temperatures where only austenite (FCC_A1) and MnS (MS_B1) are stable.

A plot showing volume fractions of phases vs temperature for 4130 steel.
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