Tailoring Deformation Homogeneity of WE43 Alloy through Strain Rate Sensitivity and Back Pressure during Equal Channel Angular Pressing

Abstract

AbstractEqual channel angular pressing (ECAP) of the magnesium alloys at room temperature owing to their limited workability is challenging. Successful ECAP processing of WE43 magnesium faces two main difficulties, heterogeneous distribution of the strain rate and also tensile strain accommodation on the top surface of the workpiece, leading to catastrophic segmentation of the alloy. In this paper, strain rate sensitivity (SRS) was studied to adopt a proper preprocessing of the material before ECAP processing. The SRS exponents, obtained from compression tests, revealed that solution treatment reduced the SRS of the alloy. To mitigate strain accommodation, an ECAP core-sheath configuration was used to induce back pressure for the sake of deformation homogeneity improvement. A combination of experimental processing and 3D finite element method simulations was applied to the solution-treated WE43 alloy with different core sizes and sheath materials. By finding the optimized core sizes and sheath materials with higher strengths, the differences in microhardness and equivalent plastic strain were reduced. Besides, the adequate magnitude of back pressure and the imposed fully compressive stress prevent fragmentation of the WE43 core during ECAP. After stepwise modifications, the plastic strain inhomogeneity index decreased from 1.340 to 0.671.