It is known that the mechanical properties of aluminum alloys can be remarkably improved by precipitation hardening technique. This application makes the aluminum alloys more competitive against steels especially in automotive industry. Recently, it has been proposed that aluminum alloys can also be significantly strengthened by refining the grain size down to nanoscale. Via severe plastic deformation (SPD), ultrafine grain sizes in bulk materials can be obtained. Equal Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP)is considered to be a good candidate that is capable to produce relatively large samples. Combined effects of SPD and precipitation hardening may result in further improvement in the mechanical properties of the existing aluminum alloys. Due to drastic microstructural changes during SPD processes, precipitation kinetics is thought to be affected significantly. Conventional heat treatment procedures are not applicable to those alloys. Hence, new procedures must be developed by manufacturing of components by combining ECAP and age hardening. In this study, the effect of ECAP process on age hardening behaviour of aluminum alloys will be investigated. The results will be evaluated to set up a correlation between ECAP and heat treatment parameters. |