Particle cracking and rotation during plastic deformation of 7075 aluminum alloy

Abstract

The utility of a novel digital image processing technique for automatic detection and separation of cracked constituent particles was applied to quantitatively characterize the microstructural damage on Fe-rich intermetallic particles that were cracked in a 7075 Al-alloy. This cracking of the Fe-rich intermetallic particles was due to a function of strain under uniaxial tension, compression, and torsion. The comparison of the data on the strained samples revealed that at tensile strain, the number fraction of the cracked Fe-rich particles was significantly higher than those at torsion while the compression strains and the average volume of the cracked Fe-rich particles increased when the strain increased. The percentage-cracked particles had a linear relationship with all of the strains for all of the loading conditions. Significant rotations of Fe-rich intermetallic particles occurred during the deformation of this alloy under torsion. These rotations tended to align themselves along the direction of applied/induced tensile stretch, which in turn affected the progression of damage due to particle cracking.