Ferritic-austenitic duplex stainless steels are used in many technical fields because of their favourable property profile. The microstructure of these alloys consists of two phases with different mechanical properties. During the production process these alloys often pass through changing temperature fields. Due to this and by reason of different high-temperature strength and thermal expansion coefficient of the ferritic and austenitic phase, these phases interact in a way which leads to an irreversible deformation of the material.

The rate of plastic deformation is determined for the forged duplex alloy 1.4462 for different temperature fields and various cooling rates after thermal cycling. With the help of metallographic test methods the varying deformation behaviour is examined.