The improvement of manufacturing processes to assure product quality and reduce the amount of raw material and energy is the main objective of many recent researches. Some of them study cross wedge rolling (CWR) as a substitute to hot upsetting in the manufacture of stepped shafts, pins, eccentric shafts and many other mechanical parts. In this process a cylinder is deformed by two wedge tools assembled on plane plates that move tangentially one against the other. The main objective of this work is to study the thermomechanical behaviour of medium carbon steel during hot CWR by means of a numerical analysis. The numerical results will be compared to the microstructure of microalloyed steel samples which were submitted to CWR experimental tests. The results suggested that dynamic recrystallization was present during CWR and that microstructures in the austenitic region were very refined.
Metal forming; finite element method; microstructural evolution
