Effects of ARB and ageing processes on mechanical properties and microstructure of 6061 aluminum alloy

Accumulative roll bonding (ARB) has been used as a severe plastic deformation process for the production of high-strength materials. Ageing treatment has been found to enhance the strength of alloys by precipitation of a second phase. In the present work, ARB followed by the ageing process was used for the fabrication of the high-strength 6061 aluminum alloy. Samples of the alloy thus made were subjected under annealed and ARBed conditions to ageing treatment at different temperatures for different times and their mechanical properties were evaluated. It was found that the microhardness and tensile strength of the specimens increased with the number of ARB cycles but their elongation values decreased. After the ageing treatment, the mechanical properties of the ARBed specimens improved in terms of both strength and ductility. Based on TEM observations, it may be concluded that the improved mechanical properties after the duplex ARB-ageing process can be attributed to the precipitation of very fine particles with a slight decrease in dislocation density and limited structure coarsening. SEM observation of fracture surfaces of aged specimens indicated that the fracture was predominantly caused by microvoid coalescence at constituent particles.