Determination of Material Parameters during Superplastic Forming of AZ31B Magnesium Alloy at Elevated Temperatures in Uniaxial Tensile Test

Abstract

Superplasticity is the ability of the material to produce neck free elongations within a material before fracture. For the past three decades superplastic forming has gained a major development in many industries to produce complex shapes. To perform the superplastic forming at elevated temperatures, the material parameters such as strain rate and strain rate sensitivity index has to be determined. These parameters affect the formability in such a way that higher the strain rate during deformation, lesser will be the percentage elongation and which in turn increases the flow stress of the material there by limiting the formability. Similarly, the strain rate sensitivity index is a measure of resistance to neck formation during deformation. Lesser the strain rate sensitivity value, more will be the neck formation thereby limiting the formability. Hence in this work, an experimental setup is designed to perform the uniaxial tensile testing at elevated temperatures to determine the flow stress, percentage elongation, strain rate and strain rate sensitivity. The determination of these parameters will be helpful in executing the forming at certain temperature and pressure to attain maximum formability. Also the SEM photographs of the fractured specimen were analysed to determine at what temperature and strain rate, the cavitation density increases.