Stabilized ferritic stainless steels are as efficient as austenitic stainless steels in many areas and less expensive. However, they suffer from a lower formability (forming + roping defect). It is therefore necessary to optimize the final microstructures and textures of these products, which requires in particular a better understanding of the evolution of the material during hot rolling.Plane strain compression tests carried out on a Gleeble® machine, reproducing the deformation during hot rolling in the center of the material, permitted to perform single- and multi-pass rolling schedules. The effects of deformation, temperature, strain rate, initial grain size and chemical composition on dynamic (during a rolling pass) and post- dynamic (during an inter-pass time) evolutions were investigated.A hot rolling pass fragments the microstructure and creates crystallites by continuous dynamic recrystallization (CDRX). A part of these crystallites becomes nuclei for the post-dynamic recrystallization (PDRX) during inter-pass time. The latter is characterized by the simultaneous activation of new nuclei and growth of recrystallized grains, not only within strain-hardened zones but also at the expense of other grains already recrystallized.The coupling of an existing CDRX model with a PDRX model based on experimental results allows to simulate multi-pass hot rolling schedules and to reproduce the effects of most of the operating parameters.
