The influence of severe plastic deformation on the mechanical properties of AA6111

The alloy AA6111 has been chosen in many countries for automotive outerbody panels, but low ductility remains a major obstacle to competition with steel. Equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE) was used as a tool to produce fine-grained structures with enhanced ductility. Conventional grain sizes in the range of 9 μm to 50 μm were used to investigate the influence of severe plastic deformation (SPD) and heat treatment on mechanical properties of AA6111 sheet at room temperature. It has been found that SPD by ECAE followed by heat treatment leads to an increase in both strength and ductility, in addition to high r-value. The increase in mechanical properties was also significantly influenced by heat-treatment temperature at the final stage of sheet processing.