Improvement of high strain rate and room temperature superplasticity in Zn–22Al alloy by two-step equal-channel angular pressing

The Zn–22Al alloy was subjected to equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) to improve its high strain rate (HSR) superplasticity at room temperature (RT). A well-designed two-step ECAP process formed an ultrafine-grained (UFG) microstructure with an average grain size of 200 nm as the lowest one obtained so far after ECAP processing of this alloy. Also, agglomerate- and texture-free microstructure with UFG Al-rich α- and Zn-rich η-grains separated mostly by high-angle grain boundaries (HAGBs) was produced by this process. The maximum RT elongation was achieved to be 400% with a strain rate sensitivity of 0.30 at a very high strain rate of 5×10−2 s−1 after the two-step ECAP process. This elongation value is the highest one obtained at RT and at all strain rates for this alloy up to now. The current results demonstrate that such an improvement in superplasticity of Zn–22Al alloy after the two-step ECAP process can enhance its applications where RT and HSR superplasticity are strongly needed.