Self-organization behaviors of shear bands in 7075 T73 and annealed aluminum alloy

Abstract

The self-organization behaviors of multiple adiabatic shear bands (ASBs) in the 7075 T73 aluminum alloy were investigated by means of the thick-walled cylinder (TWC) technique. Shear bands first nucleate at the inner boundary of the aluminum alloy tube and propagate along the maximum shear stress direction in the spiral trajectory. On the cross section of the specimen, shear bands distribute either in the clockwise or the anticlockwise direction. The number of ASBs in the clockwise direction is roughly twice that in the anticlockwise direction. However, the 7075 annealed alloy does not generate any shear band under the same experimental conditions. Numerical simulation with coupled thermo-mechanical analysis was carried out to investigate the evolution mechanism of adiabatic shear bands. Both uniform and non-uniform finite element models were created. The simulation results of the non-uniform model are in better agreement with those of the experiment. In the non-uniform case, the spacing between ASBs is larger than that of the uniform model, and most of the ASBs prefer to propagate in the clockwise direction. For the first time, two types of particles (second phase), hard particles and soft particles, are separately introduced into the metal matrix in the non-uniform model to simulate their effects on the self-organization of ASBs. The soft particles reduce the time required for ASBs nucleation. Stress collapse first occurs at the region where the soft particles are located and most of the ASBs pass through these soft particles. However, ASBs propagate along the paths that are adjacent to the hard particles instead of passing through them. As experimental observations, there is no shear band nucleating in the annealed alloy in simulation. Under the same conditions, the energy barrier for the formation of ASBs in the annealed aluminum alloy is about 2.5 times larger than that in the T73 alloy, which means that the adiabatic shearing is less likely to nucleate in the annealed alloy. This is consistent with the experimental and numerical simulation results.