Extreme Grain Refinement in Magnesium at Room Temperature by the Friction-Assisted Lateral Extrusion Process in a Single Pass
摘要
Processing Mg and its alloys at room temperature is challenging due to their poor formability. In this work, commercial pure Mg was successfully processed by the Friction-Assisted Lateral Extrusion Process (FALEP) at room temperature to obtain ultrafine-grain microstructure and high mechanical strength. During one single step of FALEP, a shear strain of 10 was imposed on the produced sheet. The microstructure and crystallographic texture evolutions during FALEP were examined by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and X-ray diffraction, and the mechanical properties were examined by tensile tests. Polycrystal simulation was also performed to shed light on the texture evolution and deformation characteristics. It was found that after processing, equiaxed ultrafine-grain microstructure was obtained with a grain size of 0.7 μm and large fractions of high-angle grain boundaries. The occurrence of continuous dynamic recrystallization was observed during FALEP. The simulated textures were in good agreement with the textures obtained from X-ray measurements, with the appearance of basal-type B-fiber and absence of the other ideal fibers of shear deformation. The tensile strength of Mg after FALEP increased significantly from 124 MPa to 212 due to the extreme grain refinement, which is comparable to that obtained in 4 to 6 passes of ECAP.