Microstructural influence on the local behaviour of 16MND5 steel

16MND5 Steel or A508 Cl3 is used for manufacture by forging of nuclear reactor vessels. This material presents a good compromise in term of tenacity and yield stress, its microstructure is mainly bainitic tempered. Because of the chemical composition local variation and process of development, this material presents microstructural heterogeneities which can locally modify the properties of damage. In particular, some zones present a martensitic microstructure. The goal of this thesis is to bring some explanations on the influence of the microstructure; more particularly, size of the crystallographic entities and their spatial distribution on the local behaviour of 16MND5 steel. Two microstructures were elaborated for this purpose, a tempered bainitic microstructure and a tempered martensitic microstructure. An experimental characterization was carried out on the two microstructures in order to determine morphology, spatial distribution of the crystallographic orientations and tensile behaviour. A deposit of micro grid was carried out on tensile specimens to determine the experimental deformation field on a beforehand EBSD analyzed zone. The determination of the tensile behaviour allowed the identification of a multi crystalline behaviour law by a reverse method using the density of dislocation on each system of slip. This behaviour law was used in simulations with a finite element method to simulate the local mechanical field of the two microstructures and to compare with the obtained experimental deformation fields. It results, a good adequacy between simulations and experiments and the description of the influence of the neighbor grain's orientation on the local behaviour. (author)