To reduce the weight of car body, Al-Mg-Si-Cu alloys are becoming increasingly attractive as a candidate for material substitution used to produce the outer body panels of automobiles because of their favorable bake-hardening response. However, the formability still needs to be further improved compared to steels. In this work, the effect of the thermomechanical processing on the mechanical properties and microstructure of Al-Mg-SiCu alloy is studied through tensile test, OM, SEM and TEM observation, as well as EBSD characterization. The results reveal that there is almost no change in both strengths and strain-hardening exponent n of the sheets in T4P condition after different thermomechanical processing, but the average plasticity strain ratio r, planar anisotropy Δr and elongations in the three directions show obvious differences. The sheet undergone hot rolling, cold rolling, intermediate annealing, cold rolling and solution (processing II) has a better formability (r= 0.6187) and a weaker planar anisotropy than that subjected to hot rolling, intermediate annealing and then cold rolling before solution treatment (processing I). Although the particle stimulated nucleation (PSN) effect of processing I is remarkable during solution treatment, due to the appropriate controlling cold deformation and distribution of second-phase particles with different sizes in processing II, most of the recrystallization grains are equiaxial and the recrystallization texture is only consisted of CubeND, Cube and H with a low intensity. At last, according to the relationship between the microstructure and the thermomechanical processing, the microstructure evolution model during different thermomechanical processes is established.
Keywords:
Al-Mg-Si-Cu alloy, thermomechanical processing, formability, recrystallization texture, modelling