Influence of Hydrostatic Extrusion Parameters on the Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of 6082 Aluminium Alloy

The aim of the work was to optimise the Hydrostatic Extrusion, HE, parameters in terms of their influence on the microstructure and certain mechanical properties of 6082 aluminium alloy. The investigations focused on the fabrication of a nano- or ultrafine-grained microstructure of the alloy. The effects of a multi-pass process were compared with those of a one-pass process producing the same cumulated true strain of 3.75. Both the multi-pass and the one-pass deformation resulted in profound grain refinement of the alloy. The microstructure contained grains with an average size of 195 nm and 239 nm, respectively. The grain refinement brought about a significant improvement in the microhardness and tensile strength of the alloy. It should be noted that the multi-pass HE produced slightly greater improvement than the single pass process.