EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

The interaction between precipitation and deformation in aluminium alloys can profoundly affect microstructure and hence properties. Deformation is observed generally to have an accelerating effect on the precipitate evolution processes of nucleation, growth, and coarsening. This acceleration is due to the interaction of deformation induced defects, such as dislocations and vacancies, with solute atoms. A better understanding and ability to predict these interactions offers the possibility to exploit deformation to reduce process times or improve performance of age hardenable aluminium alloys.

This paper discusses the interactions between deformation and precipitation for AA7075, a widely used commercial aluminium alloy. The effect of important process parameters such and temperature, strain, and strain rate on the dynamic processes are explored using simple models. These predictions are compared with results from recent in-situ dynamic precipitation experiments.

The implications of this work on the warm forming and processing of AA7xxx for applications such as automotive sheet are discussed in light of the model and experimental results.