Effect of Rolling Direction on the Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Accumulative Roll Bonding (ARB) Processed Commercially Pure 1050 Aluminum Alloy

Abstract

The cross-ARB (C-ARB) process, which adopts cross rolling of the two stacked plates, has been performed up to seven cycles on a commercial purity 1050 aluminum alloy to obtain ultrafine grains with an average grain size of 0.7μm. Microstructural evolution of the C-ARB processed aluminum alloy was examined by a transmission electron microscopy as a function of process cycle number (accumulated plastic strain). Tensile property of the severely deformed Al alloy was also explored. Grain size of grains of the C-ARB processed alloy varied across thickness of the rolled plate. The size of grains at the top and bottom of the rolled plate converged to 0.65μm, while that of grains at the center of the plate increased with the number of ARB cycles. Tensile strength of the CARB processed 1050 Al alloy increased from 100MPa (as-received) to 160MPa. Tensile elongation varied with the number of cycles, but 15% of failure strain was measured from the 6-cycle C-ARB processed specimen. The variation of the elongation with the cycle number coincided exactly with the variation of grain size at the center of the processed plate.