A study of hydrostatic extrusion as a consolidation process for fabricating ultrafine-grained bulk Al–Mg alloy

This paper deals with the hydrostatic extrusion process for fabricating an ultrafine-grained bulk Al–Mg alloy. Pre-hipped Al–7.5%Mg alloy was subjected to hot hydrostatic extrusion in order to investigate the potential use of this process as a final consolidation in fabricating the ultrafine-grained material. Tensile properties of the pre-hipped and the hydrostatically extruded materials at temperature of 298–573 K were compared to study their mechanical characteristics. Fairly good ductilities were obtained after hydrostatic extrusion. These characteristics are also consistent with their microstructures in that sub-micron-sized ultrafine grains are dominant in the specimen area and some of the large grains are located and surrounded by small grains.