Rheological behavior of Al-Mg-Si-Cu alloys in the mushy state obtained by partial remelting and partial solidification at high cooling rate

This work investigates the mechanical behavior of two aluminum alloys in the mushy state, the alloy AA6056 and an alloy based on mixing AA6056 and AA4047. These alloys have been studied to give insight into the susceptibility to hot tearing, which occurs during laser welding of AA6056 with 4047 filler wire. Two types of isothermal tensile tests have been conducted: (1) tests during partial remelting and (2) tests after partial solidification at a high cooling rate. Results show that the maximum tensile stress increases with increasing solid volume fraction. Both materials exhibit visco-plastic behavior for solid fractions in the range 0.9 to 0.99, except for a critical solid fraction of 0.97, where the semisolid material also shows minimum ductility. The stress levels observed for the remelting experiments are larger than those found for partial solidification experiments at the same solid fraction due to the influence of the microstructure. The influence of temperature and strain rate on the maximum stress is described by using a constitutive law that takes into account the fraction of grain boundaries wetted by the liquid.