Study of the Microstructure, Tensile Properties and Hardness of AZ61 Magnesium Alloy Subjected to Severe Plastic Deformation
Ondřej Hilšer,
Stanislav Rusz,
Pavel Szkandera,
Lubomír Čížek,
Martin Kraus,
Jan Džugan,
Wojciech Maziarz
Affiliations
Ondřej Hilšer
Department of Mechanical Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 15/2172, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic
Stanislav Rusz
Department of Mechanical Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 15/2172, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic
Pavel Szkandera
Department of Mechanical Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 15/2172, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic
Lubomír Čížek
Department of Materials Engineering, Faculty of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 15/2172, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic
Martin Kraus
Department of Materials Engineering, Faculty of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, 17. listopadu 15/2172, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic
Hot extruded (EX) AZ61 magnesium alloy was processed by the twist channel angular pressing (TCAP) method, which combines equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) and twist extrusion (TE) processes and significantly improves the efficiency of the grain refinement process. Both the initial hot extruded AZ61 alloy and the alloy after completion of TCAP processing were examined by using optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and their corresponding micro-tensile testing (M-TT) and hardness testing at room temperature. The results showed that the microstructure of hot extruded alloy was refined well by TCAP due to dynamic recrystallization (DRX) caused by TCAP. The tensile properties, investigated by micro-tensile testing (M-TT), of the AZ61 alloy were significantly improved due to refined microstructure. The highest tensile properties including YS of 240.8 MPa, UTS of 343.6 MPa and elongation of 21.4% of the fine-grained alloy with average grain size below 1.5 µm was obtained after the third TCAP pass at 200 °C using the processing route Bc.
