20th International Forgemasters Meeting - IFM 2017

316LN stainless steel is selected as the material for forgings in the nuclear power plant owing to its better mechanical properties and excellent corrosion resistance. In this paper, the strain stress behavior and microstructure evolution of nuclear grade 316LN austenitic stainless steel under different conditions were investigated by several thermal simulation compression tests. Based on the test result, the recrystallization mechanism of the steel were studied. Through linear regression of the experimental data, microstructure prediction models of 316LN related to temperature, strain and strain rate were established. Then the accuracy and effectiveness of these models were validated in real experiments with large size billets. The result show that these prediction models have high reliabilities and could meet the requirement of practical work.