The paper presents an experimental study on microstructure changes in duplex steel after hot deformation. Duplex steels and cast steels are characterized by a multiphase microstructure. They are relatively new materials with great contributions to the many fields of industries. Due to the fact of deforming two different phase austenite and ferrite those materials have a complex plasticity. This work is a continuation and complementation of previous works and is a significant supplement to information presented in them. The article concerns precipitation phenomena and changes in the microstructure of two grades of ferritic-austenitic steels: X2CrNiMoN25-7-4 and X2CrNiMoCuN25-6-3. Those steels have a very similar chemical composition, differing by only 2.5% copper content. An important aspect presented in the work is we observed that adding 2.5% copper prevented precipitation of the destructive sigma phase during the hot deformation.
Keywords: duplex steel; hot deformation; influence of copper addition; microstructure; plasticity; sigma phase.