Predicting Stress-Strain Behavior of ECAPed 7075 Al Alloy Using Micro-Indentation and Micro-Structural Modeling

The focus of this paper is to investigate the possibility of consideration of grains and grain boundaries and their elastic-plastic behavior to predict the stress-strain behavior of ECAPed 7075 Al alloy using a finite element micromechanical approach. For this purpose equal channel angular pressing is performed on the alloy and hardness and tensile tests were performed in the macro mode as well as the micro-indentation test on distinct areas of microstructure. Mathematical relations were obtained for the correlate the hardness and static strength properties of the alloy using the obtained data from hardness and tensile tests. In addition to the mathematical relations, backward simulation of the micro-indentation process has been used in the Abaqus finite element software to convert the hardness in the grain and its boundary to stress-strain curves. The elastic-plastic behavior of the phases has been used in microstructural modeling. Modeling of the strain test has been performed in the finite element software for the microstructures using the microstructural image. The predicted stress-strain behavior from microstructural modeling has been compared with experimental results.