Investigating the effects of hardening of aluminium alloys on equal-channel angular pressing—A finite-element study

Abstract

Equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) is a promising severe plastic deformation method for production of ultrafine-grained bulk metals and alloys with considerably improved mechanical properties. In this study, numerical experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of strain hardening of aluminum alloys on the process performance of ECAP via finite element modeling. In the constitutive model, isothermal-plane strain, frictionless condition was assumed. The numerical results showed that strain hardening behavior strongly affects the deformation homogeneity and process performance, mainly due to corner gap formation in the workpiece.