LAUSR

Abstract Recently, severe plastic deformation induced microstructure evolution has been studied through extensive experimental investigations for various materials with multiple phases during rolling processes. In this study, a dislocation density-based numerical approach is combined with strain-induced phase transformation kinetics to investigate the gain size change within steels consisting of different phases. The microstructure evolution caused by plastic deformation during rolling processes is modeled by finite element formulation with a dislocation density-based model and strain-induced transformation subroutines. The validity of the numerical solutions is evaluated through simulations of cold rolling processes of steels at different rolling strains and comparison with experimental results. It is shown that the microstructure evolution of different phases during rolling processes is well captured by the proposed approach. The predicted mechanical behavior of the rolled steels exhibits a good agreement with the experimental results under tensile loadings.