Hot deformation behavior and constitutive relationship of Q420qE steel

Isothermal compression tests at temperatures from 1 273 to 1 423 K and strain rates from 0.1 to 10 s⁻¹ were carried out to investigate the flow behaviors of Q420qE steel. Stress-strain data collected from the tests were employed to establish the constitutive equation, in which the influence of strain was incorporated by considering the effect of strain on material constants Q, n, a, and lnA. The results show that the flow stress curves are dependent on the strain, strain rate and deformation temperature. They display typical dynamic recrystallization behavior and consist of three stages, i.e., hardening stage, softening stage and steady stage. The flow stress decreases with increasing the deformation temperature and decreasing the strain rate. In addition, the flow stress data predicted by the proposed constitutive model agree well with the corresponding experimental results, and the correlation coefficient and the average absolute relative error between them are 0.990 3 and 3.686%, respectively.