Stability against coarsening in ultra-fine grained aluminum alloy AA 3103 sheet fabricated by continuous confined strip shearing

The stability of ultra-fine grained Al–Mn alloy AA 3103 against coarsening at elevated temperature is analyzed. AA 3103 sheets were produced by means of continuous confined strip shearing (CCSS), which represents an adaptation of equal channel angular pressing to impose severe plastic deformation on sheet samples. With increasing number of CCSS passages, finer and more uniform grains with an increasing fraction of high-angle grain boundaries (HAGBs) were observed. In particular, the sample subjected to 12 passages of CCSS displayed fairly uniform equiaxed grains with an average size of 1.6 μm. During subsequent annealing at 300 and 350 °C, these grains were quite stable, exhibiting a rather low growth rate. This stability is explained in terms of Humphreys’ unified theory of the stability of cellular structures, which has shown that under conditions of very large strains when HAGBs prevail intrinsically stable microstructure will be formed.