Microstructural Control of a Zn-Al Eutectoid Alloy by Hot-Rolling

The Zn-Al eutectoid alloy has been well known as a typical superplastic metallic material with small grain sizes. In the present study, controlling conditions in hot rolling such as temperature, total number of passes, reduction in a pass, etc. have been investigated in a ZnAl eutectoid alloy to obtain finegrained microstructures. Homogenized ingot specimens were hotrolled by a total rolling reduction of 90% with different pass schedule. Microstructural observation on the final sheet showed that nearly equiaxed finegrained microstructure with grain size of about 2µm was formed when the ingot was waterquenched after homogenization.