Effect of Process Parameters on Microstructures of 7055 Aluminum Alloy in Creep Age Forming

Abstract

The effects of process parameters on evolution of microstructures of 7055 aluminum alloy in creep age forming were studied and the microstrucures were analyzed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Some important results are obtained: with the increasing of ageing time, the size of platelet shaped (known as Guinier-Preston (G-P) zones) precipitates and spherical shaped η' precipitates increased, the number of platelet shaped precipitates increased too, while the number of η' precipitates decreased; the precipitates with almost the same size distributed continuously and uniformly along the grain boundary with quite narrow precipitate free zones (PFZs) at 5 hours of ageing time, when the ageing time increases to 8 hours, the distribution of the precipitates along the grain boundary becomes discontinuous and the PFZs gets wider, while with the further increasing of the ageing time, the precipitates distributed continuously again along the grain boundary and the PFZs become more wider. From comparison of stress-aged alloy to stress-free-aged alloy, it was found that after 20 hours ageing, the precipitates in the stress-aged alloy are slightly coarser and the PFZs are wider, the density of retained η' is lower with the development of η phase.