Investigation of mechanical properties and fatigue crack growth in nanostructured aluminum by ECAP process

Equal Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP) is one of the methods of refining and fine-graining metal materials. In this research, ECAP operation was performed on samples of 5182 alloy in 1 to 4 passes at ambient temperature. After implementation of the specimens through ECAP, prepared to obtain mechanical properties such as hardness, tensile and metallography. The results of these experiments showed that the mechanical properties of the packed materials through ECAP have improved compared to the normal state. Using a scanning microscope, it was observed that the average grain size decreased from 131 μm in the initial state to 745 nm after the ECAP process after the fourth pass. The results of hardness test also showed a 213% increase compared to normal.  The increase in yield stress after 4 passes is about 3 times. Finally, the crack growth of these materials under fatigue loading was compared with the non-ECAP mode by creating a suitable pre-crack. It was observed that crack growth is faster in ECAP materials and the failure surface is smoother compared to normal. Also, the deviation of the crack from its path in microstructure materials is less than normal. Finally, by comparing the Experimental results of crack growth with the results of numerical analysis, the accuracy of the numerical results is validated and confirmed.