Hot Workability and Microstructure Evolution of Homogenized 2050 Al-Cu-Li Alloy during Hot Deformation

Abstract

For this article, hot compression tests were carried out on homogenized 2050 Al-Cu-Li alloys under different deformation temperatures and strain rates, and an Arrhenius-type constitutive model with strain compensation was established to accurately describe the alloy flow behavior. Furthermore, thermal processing maps were created and the deformation mechanisms in different working regions were revealed by microstructural characterization. The results showed that most of the deformed grains orientated toward <101>//CD (CD: compression direction) during the hot compression process, and, together with some dynamic recovery (DRV), dynamic recrystallization (DRX) occurred. The appearance of large-scale DRX grains at low temperatures rather than in high-temperature conditions is related to the particle-stimulated nucleation mechanism, due to the dynamic precipitation that occurs during the deformation process. The hot-working diagrams with a true strain of 0.8 indicated that the high strain-rate regions C (300 °C–400 °C, 0.1–1 s−1) and D (440 °C–500 °C, 0.1–1 s−1) are unfavorable for the processing of 2050 Al-Li alloys, owing to the flow instability caused by local deformation banding, microcracks, and micro-voids. The optimum processing region was considered to be 430 °C–500 °C and 0.1 s−1–0.001 s−1, with a dissipation efficiency of more than 30%, dominated by DRV and DRX; the DRX mechanisms are DDRX and CDRX.