Mechanical properties and microstructure of ultrafine grained commercial purity aluminium prepared by cryo-hydrostatic extrusion

CP 99.5% aluminium was processed by cryo-hydrostatic extrusion with true strains up to 3.4 in one pass. The aim was to refine its microstructure and improve its mechanical properties. The properties of the thus processed material were compared with those obtained after the same process but run at room temperature. Cooling the billet with liquid nitrogen combined with water cooling of the extruded wire enabled suppressing partially the dynamic and static structural processes. The grain size was reduced to ~400 nm in the cryo-extrusion, and to ~450 nm in the room-extrusion. In the cryo-extrusion the increase of the yield strength to 168 MPa and the hardness to 56HV0.2 with the respective reduction of the elongation to fracture to 13.6% were obtained. The cryo-cooling effectiveness and the influence of the adiabatic heat generated during the plastic processing on the structure, mechanical properties, hardness, and tensile impact toughness just after hydrostatic extrusion, an also after the post deformation annealing are discussed. In view of the intensive adiabatic heating amounting to 0.57Tm no special improvement of the mechanical properties after the post-deformation annealing was observed. The cryo-cooling became effective at the true strain ε>2, where the extrusion pressures clearly differed from the room-extrusion pressures and the defect density substantially increased. After the cryo-hydrostatic extrusion the mechanical properties were comparable to the highest values reported in the literature for cryo-rolling but, since they were obtained in a single deformation step and with twice as large subgrains, the ductility of the extruded aluminium was higher. During the cryo-hydrostatic extrusion conducted at high strains the reduction in ductility of the aluminium is hindered and thanks to the beneficial role of the hydrostatic stress active in the material the structural and mechanical effects which occur during severe plastic deformation are enhanced.