6082agednew.doc.docVIP

Effect of Heat Treatment Conditions on the High Temperature Deformation of 6082 Al Alloy Mahmoud S. Soliman, Ehab A. EL-Danaf, Abdulhakim A. Almajid, Mechanical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King saud university, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. solimanm@ksu.edu.sa (Soliman, M.) High-temperature tensile deformation of an artificially aged 6082 Al alloy was conducted in the present investigation. Tensile tests were carried at temperatures of 623, 673 and 723 K at various strain rates ranging from 5x10-5 to 6x10-2 s-1. The behavior of the alloy is characterized by high stress exponent, n of ~12 and high apparent activation energy, Qa of~ 228 kJmol-1.These high values of n and Qa are higher than what is usually observed in Al and Al solid-solution alloys under similar experimental conditions, which implies the presence of threshold stress; this behavior results from dislocation interaction with second phase particles. The experimental threshold stress values were calculated by plotting vs σ on double linear scale with n having a value of 7. The threshold stress (σo) values were seen to decrease exponentially with temperature. By incorporating the threshold stress in the analysis, the true activation energy was calculated to be ~ 80 kJmol-1, close for that of dislocation pipe diffusion in Al. Analysis of strain rate dependence in terms of the Zener- Hollomon parameter vs normalized effective stress (σ- σo)/G, revealed a single type of deformation behavior with an n value of ~7. KEYWORDS High-temperature deformation; 6082 Al alloy; threshold stress; activation energy; Aging; Dislocation pipe diffusion. 1. INTRODUCTION The 6xxx-Al alloys contain magnesium and silicon as major alloying elements. Al-Mg-Si alloys have recently been used for automotive body sheet panel for weight saving. However, this is partially limited by poor press formability in these alloys, though both specific stiffness and strength are sufficiently high. These aluminum alloys