Abstract:The paper deals with a theoretical and experimental study of the relationship between the microstructural parameters, mechanical properties, and impact deformation and fracture of steels using the example of 17Mn1Si pipe steel. A model for the behavior of a polycrystalline grain conglomerate under impact loading at different temperatures was proposed within a cellular automata framework. It was shown that the intensity of dissipation processes explicitly depends on temperature and these processes play an important role in stress relaxation at the boundaries of structural elements. The Experimental study reveals the relationship between pendulum impact test temperature and the deformation/fracture energy of the steel. The impact toughness was shown to decrease almost linearly with the decreasing test temperature, which agrees with the fractographic analysis data confirming the increase in the fraction of brittle fracture in this case. It was shown with the aid of the proposed model and numerical simulations that the use of the excitable cellular automata method and an explicit account of test temperature through the possibility of energy release at internal interfaces help to explain the experimentally observed features of impact failure at different temperatures.