Enhancement of Tensile Ductility of Severe Plastically Deformed Two-Phase Zn-12Al Alloy by Equal Channel Angular Extrusion

Abstract

Tensile properties (mainly the ductility and fracture mode) of two-phase Zn-12Al alloy subjected to severe plastic deformation (SPD) via multi-pass equal-channel angular extrusion (ECAE) following route-Bc were investigated. As a result of ECAE processing, elongation to failure (as a ductility) of the alloy increased substantially and continuously with increasing the number of ECAE passes. However, the majority of the tensile strains are obtained in the state of plastic instability and therefore the uniform strains achieved along the gage length are very limited for this alloy. On the other hand, the strength of the alloy increased with increasing the number of passes up to 2, above which it decreased. The alloy sample after four ECAE passes exhibited 168% total elongation to failure at room temperature, which was 26 times higher than that of the as-cast one. This result indicates that multi-pass ECAE is effective on improving the tensile ductility of binary Zn-Al alloys. The fracture mode of the as-cast alloy samples completely changed after multi-pass ECAE and the brittle fracture behavior of the as-cast alloy was transformed into the ductile mode after processing.