Research on the Superplastic Forming of Copper Alloy Solid-Bearing Cages Used in Railway Vehicles

In this paper uniaxial tensile tests were carried out at temperature range of 650~810◦C and initial strain rate range of 10-4~10-1s-1 to evaluate the superplasticity of as-casting aluminum-bronze QAl10-3-1.5 alloy. The superplastic forming technology (SPF) was adopted to produce solid-bearing cages made of aluminum-bronze QAl10-3-1.5 alloy. The results demonstrate that as-casting QAl10-3-1.5 copper alloy shows good superplasticity without prior-treatment. The maximum elongation of 545% is obtained at 790◦C and initial strain rate of 1.0×10-2 s-1, while the maximum flow stress is only 12.4MPa. By using superplastic extrusion technology solid-bearing cages used in railway vehicles were obtained. As-extruded cages have good surface quality and the dimensional accuracy satisfies the design standards. Using this technology the production efficiency is greatly enhanced and the manufacturing cost is reduced, especially the expensive copper alloys are saved.