Hot deformation behaviour of sintered cobalt

Hot deformation of sintered cobalt during hot compression testing was investigated in the temperature range of 700–1000 °C and at strain rates ranging from 0.0005 to 0.1 s−1. Cobalt underwent considerable dynamic recrystallization (DRX) during hot deformation, with stress-strain flow curves exhibiting one or several peaks followed by significant flow softening and leading to a steady-state stress. Constitutive equations were used to derive the flow stress behaviour. A physically based model to describe the strain rate as a function of stress was suggested for temperatures ranging between 775 and 1000 °C. In this case, a creep exponent (n) of 5 indicated that the deformation mechanism was controlled by the glide and climb of dislocations. The activation energy coinciding with the one for self-diffusion of ferromagnetic cubic cobalt implied a diffusion-controlled mechanism and the presence of face-centered cubic (FCC) cobalt during deformation. Interestingly, the results at 700 °C could not be perfectly fitted to this model and exhibited a higher resistance to deformation. This revealed that the glide and climb deformation mode was close to the transition where glide mode was dominant, and thus mostly glide occurred at 700 °C, especially for the largest strain rates.