Manufacturing of high strength thin-walled aluminum 6063 tubes through severe plastic deformation combined with peak-aging treatment

Abstract

Thin-walled aluminum tubes are widely used for different structural purposes, and therefore, the development of new methods for strengthening these elements is critical. This matter is especially true for aluminum alloys 6xxx since their maximum strengths projected through peak-aging are considerably lower than the similar strength of other wrought aluminum alloys like 2xxx and 7xxx. Although different works have proposed the imposition of severe plastic deformation for strengthening of 6xxx alloys, the application of this method for thin-walled tubes has been less studied due to the complexities of the severe plastic deformation processing of thin-walled tubes. In this study, the manufacturing of high-strength thin-walled aluminum 6063 tubes through the imposition of a new severe plastic deformation process and a subsequent post-aging treatment at two different temperatures is studied. For this purpose, the tension test is applied to measure the strength variation. Also, the electron backscattering diffraction equipped with scanning electron microscopy and the X-ray diffraction experiments are applied to investigate the microstructural evolution. Results show that the proposed approach can be successfully applied to the manufacturing of high-strength thin-walled aluminum 6063 tubes. Also, the strengthening effect of this procedure is attributed to an increase in the dislocation density and refinement of grains during the imposition of severe plastic deformation and an appearance of finer precipitates during the peak-aging treatment.