Modified constitutive model and workability of 7055 aluminium alloy in hot plastic compression

Abstract

To obtain flow behavior and workability of 7055 aluminium alloy during hot deformation, hot compression tests at different temperatures and strain rates are conducted. True stress-strain curves of 7055 aluminium alloy under different conditions are obtained and the flow stress increases with ascending strain rate and descending temperature. For Arrhenius constitutive equation, each material parameter is set as a constant, which will bring forth large error for predicting flow behavior. In this work, material parameters are fitted as a function of temperature or strain rate based on experimental results and a modified constitutive equation is established for more accurate prediction of flow behavior of 7055 aluminium alloy. The effects of temperature and strain rate on power dissipation and instability are analyzed to establish a processing map of 7055 aluminium alloy. The dominant deformation mechanism for microstructure evolution at different deformation conditions can be determined and high efficiency of power dissipation may be achieved from power dissipation map. Meanwhile, proper processing parameters to avoid flow instability can be easily acquired in instability map. According to the processing map, optimized processing parameters of 7055 aluminium alloy are temperature of 673–723 K and strain rate of 0.01–0.4 s−1, during which its efficiency of power dissipation is over 30%. Finite element method (FEM) is used to obtain optimized parameter in hot rolling process on the basis of processing map.