Effects of ECAE process on the fatigue crack growth rate of copper metal

In this study, the effects of the number of passes performed by the Equal Channel Angular Extrusion as a severe plastic deformation process on copper metal's microstructure and mechanical properties, especially its resistance to fatigue crack growth, have been investigated. The experimental results show that as the number of processes passes increases, the copper metal grains become finer and as a result less stress is concentrated at the starting points of the fatigue fracture, which delays the fracture. For example, after performing 8 ECAE process passes, the threshold values of fatigue crack growth increases by 113.2% relative to the base metal. Moreover, as the grains become smaller, the number of grains and consequently the number of grain boundaries will increase and thus more obstacles will be placed in the way of crack growth. Also, the SEM images indicate that many fine and equiaxed dimples in processed copper become smaller as the number of passes increases. This shows that finer and more equiaxed grains will be obtained by repeating the ECAE process and thus repeating the occurrence of recrystallization. It was cleared that this process improves the mechanical properties of the copper other than the failure strain. However, by increasing the number of process passes, this problem can be significantly reduced. Highlights The fine grains considerably delay the fatigue fracture By ECAE process, the threshold value of fatigue crack growth increases by 113.2% All zones resulting from fatigue fracture are recognizable in fractured ECAE sample The SEM images indicate that a ductile failure has occurred in the tensile samples

Microstructure and Texture Evolution during Severe Plastic Deformation at Cryogenic Temperatures in an Al-0.1Mg Alloy

The deformation structures formed in an Al-0.1Mg single-phase aluminium alloy have been studied during plane strain compression (PSC) down to liquid nitrogen temperature, following prior equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE) to a strain of ten. Under constant deformation conditions a steady state was approached irrespective of the temperature, where the rate of grain refinement stagnated and a minimum grain size was reached which could not be further reduced. A 98% reduction at 77 K (−196 °C) only transformed the ECAE processed submicron grain structure into a microstructure with thin ribbon grains, where a nanoscale high angle boundary (HAB) spacing was only approached in the sheet normal direction. It is shown that the minimum grain size achievable in severe deformation processing is controlled by a balance between the rate of compression of the HAB structure and dynamic recovery. The required boundary migration rate to maintain a constant boundary spacing is found far higher than can be justified from conventional diffusion-controlled grain growth and at low temperatures, a constant boundary spacing can only be maintained by invoking an athermal mechanism and is considered to be dominated by the operation of grain boundary dislocations.

A New Method of Manufacturing Thin-Walled Tube Made of AZ61 Magnesium Alloy Including Direct Extrusion And Corrugated Equal Channel Angular Extrusion

Due to demand of strong toughness of thin walled tube, and good secondary forming properties and high-precision dimension, New plastic forming method should be researched to achieve a complete filling, uniform deformation and microstructure evolution during forming process.To obtain the deformation mechanisms of a new composite extrusion for thin walled tube fabricated by tube corrugated equal channel angular extrusion has been researched which is shorten as “TC-ECAE” in this paper. Finite element DEFORMTM-3D software to investigate the plastic deformation behavior of magnesium billet during TC-ECAE process has been employed. Computed parameters including workpiece material characteristics and process conditions have been taken into consideration. The pridictions of strains distributions and damage distributions and effective stress distributions and flow velocities distributions and microstructures evolutions have been explored. The results proved that the TC-ECAE process is a forming method for magnesium alloy tube which is suitable for large scale industrial application. The TC-ECAE process would cause serve plastic deformation and improve the dynamic recrystallization of magnesium alloy during TC-ECAE process.