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Microstructures and properties evolution of Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy under electrical pulse assisted creep aging

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Abstract

Creep aging (CA) is a promising forming technology for integral panels with complex structures. However, how to balance excellent corrosion resistance and strength is still a challenge for CA parts. By synchronously applying electrical pulse (300 Hz, 15 A/mm2) in the middle of steady-state CA of Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy, the electrically assisted CA (ECA) is proposed to induce retrogression rapidly for realizing a three-step aging (retrogression and re-aging, RRA) in CA to tailor the needed properties balance. It is compared with conventional CA with one-step aging (peak aging, T6 or over aging, T7), two-step aging (over aging, T73) and RRA in hardness, intergranular corrosion and microstructures. For the ECA of pre-aging and re-aging for 20 h plus electropulsing for 10 min, the hardness is 10.5%, 20.5% and 18.9% higher than those of CA with T6, T7 and T73 processes, respectively, while the corrosion resistance is higher than T6 process and lower than T7 and T73 processes. Although the hardness and corrosion resistance are comparable to those of the CA with the RRA process, ECA takes one hour less due to the accelerated effect of the electropulsing and is not limited by the thick plates. The improved comprehensive performance of the ECA sample is due to both fine intragranular precipitates η′ and large discontinuous grain boundary precipitates η.

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Acknowledgements

The research is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51905424, 51522509, 51235010). Meanwhile, we would like to thank the Analytical & Testing Center of Northwestern Polytechnical University for its assistant in transmission electron microscope imaging.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, People’s Republic of China

    Tian-Jun Bian, Heng Li, Chang-Hui Wu & Li-Wen Zhang

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an, 710048, People’s Republic of China

    Chao Lei

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  1. Tian-Jun Bian
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  2. Heng Li
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Correspondence to Heng Li.

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Bian, TJ., Li, H., Lei, C. et al. Microstructures and properties evolution of Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy under electrical pulse assisted creep aging. Adv. Manuf. 10, 596–609 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40436-022-00404-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40436-022-00404-2

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