Magnesium matrix composites synergistically reinforced by SiC nanoparticles and second phases were prepared by 12 passes of multi-pass forging, varying the temperature. The effects of grain refinement and the precipitates on the hot deformation behavior were analyzed. Deformation zones which could be observed in the fine-grained nanocomposite before hot compression disappeared, and the trend of streamlined distribution for the precipitated phases was weakened. At the same compression rate, as the compression temperature increased, the number of precipitated phases decreased, and the grain size increased. For fine-grained nanocomposites, after the peak stress, there was no obvious dynamic softening stage on the stress⁻strain curve, and then the steady stage was quickly reached. The critical stress of the fine-grained nanocomposites was lower than that of the coarse-grained nanocomposites, which can be attributed to the large amounts of precipitates and significantly refined grains. The deformation mechanism of the coarse-grained nanocomposite was controlled by dislocation climb resulting from lattice diffusion, while the deformation mechanism for the fine-grained nanocomposite was dislocation climb resulting from grain boundary slip. The activation energy of the fine-grained nanocomposite was decreased, compared with the coarse-grained nanocomposite. The area of the workability region for the fine-grained nanocomposite was significantly larger than that of the coarse-grained nanocomposite, and there was no instability region at a low strain rate (0.001⁻0.01 s-1) under all deformation temperatures. The optimal workability region was 573 K /0.001⁻0.01 s-1 for the fine-grained nanocomposite, and the processing temperature was lower than the coarse-grained nanocomposite (623⁻673 K).
Keywords: deformation mechanism; flow behavior; magnesium matrix nanocomposite; processing map.