Formability of aluminium sheets manufactured by solid state recycling

Abstract

Conventional recycling practices for non-ferrous metallic scrap involves melting followed by purification. This practice is suitable for recycling when the large volume of scrap is available. Though such recycling reduces consumption of diminishing metallic resources, high energy requirement and material loss during melting and purification limit its applicability. In the present work, manufacturing of solid state recycled aluminium sheet by hot rolling is explored and its formability characterized. Aluminium chips were divided into smaller particles (1~2mm) by crushing. After stress relief annealing, chips were cold compacted into square slabs (75*75mm section) of different thicknesses. Another similar set of slabs was made by hot compaction. The compacted slabs were hot rolled over a number of passes at 400°C. Each slab was reduced to approximately 90% thickness to get the sheet thickness in the range of 0.6 to 1.5 mm. Microstructure revealed good interface bonding between the chip particles. Mechanical properties of the sheet from room temperature up to 200°C and at different strain rates were characterized by a number of tensile tests. Circular blanks from sheet were drawn into cylindrical cups and strain distribution was observed along different directions of rolling using circle grid analysis.