Effects of cross-channel extrusion on microstructure and mechanical properties of AA6061 aluminum alloy

The aluminum AA6061 alloy was heavily deformed by the cross-channel extrusion (CCE) process, and the effects of CCE on the microstructure and mechanical properties were investigated in this study. The initial grain size of the AA6061 alloy was about 700 μm. After extrusion for up to 8 passes at temperatures from 473 K to 573 K, a fine-grained structure was observed with a grain size of 0.2–4 μm. The higher hardness and tensile strength were obtained from the sample extruded at lower temperature. Moreover, the dispersion was gradually refined with increasing extrusion passes and resulted in an improvement of elongation.