Mechanical behavior of constrained groove pressed stainless steel and pure zinc

Abstract

Constrained groove pressing (CGP), a severe plastic deformation method, has been implemented on AISI 304 and commercially pure zinc samples in the present work. Four CGP passes were successfully applied to both materials providing a remarkable improvement in both strength and hardness values, despite reduced ductility. Average grain size values were diminished by around 45% for 304 stainless steel and 47% for commercially pure zinc. The highest levels of strengthening due to severe deformation were displayed after the initial passes for both materials. CGP was shown to be a viable method for strengthening based on deformation processing, whereby similar trends in microstructure and mechanical behavior were observed for both crystal structures.