Damaging Prediction of Difficult-to-Work Aluminum Alloys During Equal Channel Angular Pressing

Severe plastic deformation (SPD) is a well-established method in the recent years for grain refinement in metallic materials. Equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) is one of the most effective SPD techniques. Inherent failures of ECAP, consisting in billet damage, take place if not made a correct process design. In this article, the evolution of damaging for a difficult-to-work Al-Mg alloy during ECAP was investigated. A tridimensional finite element analysis was performed for four different die designs to study the influence of die geometry and process parameters on billet damaging. To validate modeling we used, load level and strain distribution were depicted. Experimental tests were performed to test the numerical prediction. The results show that cracking may be reduced or eliminated by inner fillet corner of the die channels. It was demonstrated that the predicted results were in good agreement with experimental data obtained for 5052 aluminum alloy. The direct effect of knowledge about load and damaging during ECAP is to prevent both tool and billet damage.