Abstract Creep age forming (CAF) is an advanced forming technology used for manufacturing large complex integrated panel components. However, in creep aging (CA), unlike in sole creep or aging procedure, the dislocation movement and the precipitation process occur simultaneously, leading to difficulty in understanding of the dynamic interplay between these two phenomena. In this work, taking 7050 Al alloy, a typical Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy, as the test material, an experimental scheme combining pre-deformation, artificial aging (AA), and tensile/ compressive CA is designed to decouple and reveal the dynamic interaction mechanism of both phenomena. From AA experiments, the static interaction between dislocations and precipitates is studied, and then their dynamic interactions in CA and each evolution are comparatively investigated. The research shows that both total strain and strain rate increase with the increase in pre-deformation in tensile and compressive CA. However, the total creep strain in compressive CA is larger than that in tensile CA. In additional, the more the dislocations are induced, the sparser and more heterogeneous the overall distribution of precipitates becomes. For dynamic interplay, in the first stage of CA (I), under thermal-mechanical loading, the GP zones and η phases gradually nucleate and grow, while the effect of dislocation multiplication is dominant compared with dislocation annihilation, leading to an increase in total dislocation density. Soon, the dislocation movement is gradually hindered by tangling, pile-up, and the precipitates that have grown on the dislocation lines, this decreases the mobile dislocation density and results in a significant decrease in creep rate. In the second stage (II), the precipitates grow further, especially those lying on the dislocation lines;the effects of pinning and hindrance are enhanced until the dislocation multiplication and annihilation reach a dynamic equilibrium, and the total and mobile dislocation densities tend to be roughly unchanged, thus,
Heng LiTian-Jun BianChao LeiGao-Wei ZhengYu-Fei Wang
Non-isothermal Creep Age Forming(CAF),including loading,heating,holding,cooling and springback stages,is an advanced forming technique for manufacturing high performance large integral panels at short production period and low cost.However,the creep deformation and aging precipitation during heating stage is often neglected in experiments and modeling,leading to low forming precision.To achieve shape forming and property tailoring simultaneously,a deep understanding of the non-isothermal creep aging behavior and the establishment of predictive models are urgently required.A new five-stage creep feature of Al-Cu-Li alloy during the non-isothermal creep aging is observed.The microstructural interactions between the dislocations,solute atoms,Guinier Preston zones(GP zones)and T1 precipitates are found to dominate the five-stage creep aging behavior.The physical-based model considering temperature evolution history is established to describe the five-stage creep feature.The springback and yield strength of non-isothermal creep age formed plates with different thicknesses are predicted and compared by non-isothermal CAF experiments and corresponding simulations.The CAF experiments show that the springback and yield strength of the non-isothermal creep age formed plate are 62.1%and 506 MPa,respectively.Simulation results are in good agreement with experimental results.The proposed model broadens the application of traditional CAF models that mainly focus on isothermal conditions.
The frequent occurrence of hitherto unknown phase Pre-θ′-2 and unusual 1.5 cθ′thick θ′precipitate was observed by atomic-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy in the well-studied Al-Cu alloys. This phenomenon is associated with heterogeneous precipitate nucleation and growth on preexisting dislocations introduced by slight deformation prior to aging. In this study, the precise structure details of Pre-θ′-2 was determined by atomic scale imaging, image simulation based on image forming theories and first principle calculations. Pre-θ′-2 has a well-defined ordered structure sandwiched between two 2 aAl(~1.5 cθ′) spaced Cu layers on {200}Alplanes. The strong structural similarities between Pre-θ′-2 and 1.5 cθ′ thick θ′ in terms of interfacial structure and thickness, coupled with energetic calculations and preliminary in-situ observations, lead us to propose a new precipitation path toward key strengthening phase θ′
The initial temper of the material may directly affect the whole creep age forming （CAF） process. In terms of creep deformation and stress relaxation, using the constant-stress creep aging and constant-strain stress relaxation aging tests, the relationship between initial temper and CAF formability is investigated for an Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy at 165 ℃ for 18 h. Three tempers are selected as the initial tempers in CAF, viz., solution, retrogression and re-solution. The CAF formability of this alloy with initial temper of retrogression is the best, and the creep strain of the retrogression tempered specimen after creep aging of 18 h is about 1.21 and 1.34 times than that of the solution and the re-solution tempered specimens, respectively. The calculated stress exponents of this alloy with three initial tempers range from 7.3 to 9.5, indicating that the CAF of this alloy is mainly controlled by the dislocation creep. The various formability for three initial tempers are attributed to different inhibitions of the transgranular precipitates on the dislocation movement. For the retrogression temper, the initial fine and uniformly distributed precipitates are seriously coarsened after 6 h of CAF, which minimally inhibit the dislocation movement. While, for the re-solution temper, the fine precipitates are re-precipitated in the matrix of the alloy, which observably hinder the dislocation movement and lead to the worst formability.
