Mechanical properties and microstructure of Al–Mg (5052) alloy processed by equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) with variation of ECAP routes and heat treatment

Abstract

Equal-Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP) has become an effective technique of severe plastic deformation designed to produce ultrafine grain metals with improved mechanical properties, such as a good combination of strength and ductility. A  report on the effect of ECAP routes on the mechanical and microstructure of commercial 5052 aluminum alloy needs also to be included. This work has been undertaken, in order to obtain the results. In this work, several deformation routes were used to process the Al – Mg (5052) alloy, namely A, Ba, Bc and C. Deformation route A involved repeatedly pushing the sample into the ECAP die without rotation, route Ba was performed by rotating the sample through 90° in alternate directions between each pass, route Bc by rotating the sample 90° in the same sense between each pass and route C by rotating the sample 180° between passes. The addition of the pass number decreases the grain size of ECAP-processed samples when compared to the as-annealed sample. It also confirmed that the microstructure of the 8-pass samples shows a finer grain size than the as-annealed sample. Furthermore, the Bc route (samples rotated in the same sense by 90° between each pass) has been proven to be the most effective deformation route, in order to obtain equiaxed ultrafine grain structure when compared to other deformation routes. This phenomenon takes place due to the continuous deformation in all cubic planes. The restoration after the 4-pass number will lead to the rapid evolution of sub-grains to high-angle grain boundaries, forming equiaxed grains. The characterization of the hardness number also shows that the addition of the ECAP pass number increases the hardness number of 5052 aluminum alloy, where samples processed with the Bc route indicate the highest hardness number at 168.4 HB. Moreover, a similar phenomenon also suggests that the tensile strength of all ECAP deformation routes has comparable values. The effect of heat treatment for samples with the Bc route also shows that 200 °C annealed samples have the highest hardness number and tensile strength when compared to other samples.