Evolution of the microstructure and mechanical properties of AZ61 alloy processed by half channel angular extrusion (HCAE), a novel severe plastic deformation process

A new concept of severe plastic deformation (SPD) process is introduced. The proposed process, named half channel angular extrusion (HCAE), which is the integration of equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE) and the conventional forward extrusion process in order to enhance the formability and mechanical properties of Mg alloys. This paper focuses on the performance of HCAE process with extruded AZ61 alloy at elevated temperature in grain refinement and the improvement of mechanical properties, and this performance was evaluated through an OIM experiment using EBSD. The results show that the proposed HCAE process not only improves the efficiency of the SPD process with only one pass but also increase the elongation and hardness dramatically.