As a heat treatable aluminum alloy to be used in T6 and T8 temper, belongs to Al-Cu-Li system, a novel high-strength aluminum-lithium alloy 2A97 was developed. In order to improve the relationships of strength and ductility and fracture toughness, and to urge the applications in the aeronautical and aerospace industries, the effects of normal heat treatments and thermomechanical heat treatments on the mechanical properties and fracture toughness were investigated by Transmission Electron Microscope(TEM), Scanning Electronic Microscope (SEM), tensile test, and fracture toughness test. The results show that for the alloy aged at 135 °C for 24 h after quenching and 4 percent plastic deformation, its microstructures are strengthened by strain hardening and precipitation hardening, consisting of fine T1phase, θ″/θ′ phase and δ′ phase densely and homogeneously distributed in the matrix. It yields optimum relationship of strength and ductility, fracture toughness, its σ0.2, σband δ5are 454 MPa, 536 MPa, and 11.8%, respectively. It yields 43.5 MPa·m1/2of Kqvalues higher than that of 42.5 MPa·m1/2 in T6 temper. The fracture morphologies of impact tensile samples of fracture toughness test and normal tensile test were observed, indicating the dominance of intergranular failure and subintergranular failure with some dimples and trangranular failure.

Recently, a new super-high-strength Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy with Zr bearing was developed in BIAM. In this paper, the effect of microalloying element Zr on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the alloy was investigated. It was found that the influence of Zr on the microstructure and age-hardening behaviors was remarkable. The strength of the alloy increases with increasing the content of zirconium, and the peak value of the elongation appeared when the content of Zr was 0.06%(mass fraction) and then decreases. The fracture behavior was also studied. The result shows that the fracture mechanism of the alloy was converted from intergranular brittle to transgranular ductile model with increasing the content of zirconium. Finally, the optimum contents of Zr in the alloy were proposed as 0.10%~0.14%.