Mechanical behaviour of Aluminium Alloy AA6063 processed through ECAP with optimum die design parameters

Abstract

Equal Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP) is one of the most effective techniques for the formation of ultra-fine grained bulk material. The material is passed through the channel in the specially designed die in the ECAP process. The die design parameters like corner angle, channel angle and other parameters play an important role in the formation of ultra-fine grains. The die with optimum design parameters, with channel angle 90° and corner angle 20°, was designed and fabricated in the laboratory and commercial Aluminium AA6063 was used as sample material to investigate the mechanical behaviour/properties before and after the ECAP process. In the present work, the mechanical behaviour of commercially pure Aluminium processed by ECAP die with an optimum die design parameter is studied and examined. The path adopted was BC and pressing was done from 0 to 3 numbers of times. The results revealed that the grain size reduced from 530 to 220 nm and tensile strength increases from 275.8 to 368.4 MPa after three numbers of ECAP passes.