High temperature thermo mechanical treatment of CORTEN – IRS-M41–97 Steel by Equal Channel Angular Rolling Process

CORTEN – IRS M41 – 97 weathering steel is chosen for the present study to find its characteristics. Equal Channel Angular Rolling (ECAR) is one of the modern severe plastic deformation methods used for sheet metals to enhance their properties. The specified metal is subjected to high-temperature thermo-mechanical treatment (HTMT), during which the ECAR process is carried out. The metal is heated to 850 °C to form the austenite phase and then immediately fed into the ECAR machine to obtain a first-pass, high-temperature, thermomechanical heat-treated sample. The obtained first-pass sample is reheated, and the same procedure is repeated to obtain second- and third-pass samples. Another set of raw samples are subjected to heat treatment processes of Annealing, Normalising and Hardening for comparison with the above obtained ECAR samples. The samples prepared by two methods are subjected to Metallography and Rockwell hardness tests for contrast the structures and Hardness values. There is a good relation between optical images and Rockwell hardness values.