Effect of the forming process on the microstructure of aluminium parts for collective transports

Abstract

The topic of the current work is an investigation of the microstructure of 6082 Aluminium alloy in artificial aged condition (T6 condition) before and after cold forging test. Aluminium is an essential choice when working on the lightening of metallic structures. Different levels of plastic strain have been applied to correlate the forging parameters with the microstructure changes. EBSD in combination with EDS analysis have been performed to well describe the microstructure properties. It was found that the local misorientation inside the grains increases with the nominal plastic strain. The formation of low angle grain boundaries (2° < θ < 15°) takes place both along initial grain boundaries (θ > 15°) and within the original grains. This result is an indication of the local deformation of grains during cold forging. © Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2013.