A Study on Effect of Severe Plastic Deformation Process on Hardness of Aluminum Alloys

Aluminum alloys have a wide range of applications mainly because of its high specific strength, easy to process, anti-erosion, and eco-friendly in nature. These properties make it highly applicable in many sectors like packaging, automotive industries, electronics industries, etc. in this study commercially available AA8011 is considered for study which has higher tensile strength, hardness and better wear resistance. Many methods are adopted to improve hardness of these materials where it is directly proportional to rise in weight of the material. Hardening the material without increasing the weight can be done by Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) processes. Among many SPD processes, Continuous Repetitive Corrosion & Strengthening (CRCS) method is being adopted for the present study. In this method, grain structure of material can be reformed and this in turn increases the mechanical properties. Study reveals that after processing of AA8011 sheets through CRCS method, increase in number of passes increases grain refinement leading to increase in hardness of the material.