from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Over the past twenty years, there has been a rising interest in heat-treatable 6xxx series aluminum alloys, primarily due to their impressive strength-to-weight ratio, excellent formability, and outstanding corrosion resistance characteristics [1]. In conventional manufacturing processes, those alloys are solution heat treated and artificially aged following a hot forging process [2]. Besides heat treatment, forging conditions have a major effect on the final properties and grain structure of the forged products. In the current study, effect of the forging temperature on the mechanical properties as well as microstructure of EN AW 6056 aluminum alloy has been investigated. Cylindrical samples with a diameter of 65 mm and length of 160 mm are upset forged with flat dies in their radial direction using a mechanical press. Forging temperature is varied between 150°C and 450°C with 100°C steps. Afterwards, all forged samples are solution heat treated at 550°C for 90 minutes and quenched in water at room temperature. Subsequently, samples are artificially aged at 190°C for 4 hours. Contrary to the common believe, although solution heat treatment is applied at a relatively high temperature, forging temperature had a major influence on the microstructure of samples. Nevertheless, no effect has been observed in the hardness distribution in the forged samples.
Keywords: Aluminum forging, artificial aging, precipitation© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.