Enhancement of mechanical properties and grain size refinement of commercial purity aluminum 1050 processed by ECAP

Equal channel angle pressing (ECAP) of commercial purity aluminum (1050) was conducted using two processing routes, namely routes BC and C. The variation of hardness and yield strength with number of pressings was documented up to eight passes. Compression tests were used to evaluate post ECAP deformation response. Electron back scattered diffraction (EBSD) was used to obtain statistical information on the microstructure developed (cell size and misorientation angle) during ECAP and after combining ECAP with simple compression. The present results showed that first ECAP pass has resulted in enhancement of mechanical properties more than three times over the annealed condition. Further ECAP processing has resulted in slight improvement. The true stress-strain curve for ECAPed specimens tested under compression showed short transient region of large strain hardening rate followed by perfectly plastic behavior and strain softening. This behavior was discussed in details based on the microstructure study. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.