Deformation Characteristics and Constitutive Equations for the Semi-Solid Isothermal Compression of Cold Radial Forged 6063 Aluminium Alloy

Al-Mg-Si based alloys are popular alloys used in the automotive industry. However, limited studies have been performed to investigate the microstructure, deformation characteristics, and deformation mechanism for the semi-solid 6063 alloys. In this study, the cold radial forging method and semi-solid isothermal treatment (SSIT) are proposed in the semi-solid isothermal compression (SSIC) process to fabricate high-quality semi-solid 6063 billets. The effects of deformation temperature, strain rate, and strain on the microstructure, deformation characteristics, and deformation mechanism of the SSIC of cold radial forged 6063 alloys were investigated experimentally. Constitutive equations were established based on the measured data in experiments to predict the flow stress. Results show that an average grain size in the range from 59.22 to 73.02 μm and an average shape factor in the range from 071 to 078 can be obtained in the microstructure after the cold radial forged 6063 alloys were treated with SSIT process. Four stages (i.e., sharp increase, decrease, steady state, and slow increase) were observed in the true stress- true strain curve. The correlation coefficient of the constitutive equation was obtained as 0.9796 while the average relative error was 5.01%. The deformation mechanism for SSIC of cold radial forged aluminum alloy 6063 mainly included four modes: The liquid phase flow, grain slide or grain rotation along with the liquid film, slide among solid grains, and the plastic deformation of solid grains.