INFLUENCE OF ROUTE-R ON AL-6061 ALLOY MECHANICAL PROPERTIES THROUGH EQUAL CHANNEL ANGULAR PRESSING

Abstract

There are numerous ways to enhance the mechanical properties of aluminum, but se vere plastic deformation (SPD) processing of materials has drawn a lot of attention in the research community in recent years because of the distinctive physical and me chanical properties that can be obtained. Equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) is one of these methods. ECAP involves subjecting the metal to strong plastic straining by simple shear without altering the sample’s cross-sectional dimensions, processing routes can be used to obtain maximum grain refinement and strain but this maximum strain was induced at the top and middle portion of the billet not distributed from top to down uniformly. This study attempts to enhance the mechanical and tribolog ical characteristics of the aluminum alloy 6061 utilizing the understudied processing method R where samples were inverted after the first path so strains are distributed uniformly from top to bottom. Al-6061 alloy is processed by 1-pass, route A, and route R at room temperature. The Al-6061 alloy’s ultimate tensile strength has in creased where 1 pass, route A, and route R showed an increase of 44.23%, 53.19%, and 56.7% respectively compared to the as-received Al-6061 alloy, Rockwell hardness of the alloy increased after one pass by 119.3%, and after two passes using route R and A by 176.3%, and 164.8% respectively as compared to the as-received specimen. The microstructure of the route R Al6061 alloy showed an improvement compared to as-received, In the wear test as the applied load increases from 10N to 25N in the step of 15N, the coefficient of friction and wear loss increased. At 25N load, the max imum weight loss was 0.02g for as-received Al-6061 alloy and the minimum weight loss was 0.0035g for ECAPed using route R Al-6061 alloy. Finite element simulation load prediction was validated by experiment, comparing the experimental hydraulic press load to the simulated load prediction the error of difference was fairly enough to validate the experiment