Caracterização microestrutural e mecânica da liga AA7050 reciclada por conformação por spray, extrusão e forjamento rotativo

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the microstructure and the mechanical properties of hot extruded bars and cold rotary swaging wires of an AA7050 alloy. The ingot for the mechanical conformation operations was obtained by spray forming using machining chips from an aircraft manufacturer as raw material. The microstructural characterization of the final and intermediaries products (deposit and extruded bar) was performed by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy; the mechanical characterization was done by tensile tests. The deposit obtained by spray deposition was submitted to hot compression tests with the aim to obtain the parameters of a constitutive equation for predict the hot deformation behavior in two different conditions homogenized and without any treatment. The process route adopted showed to be effective to eliminate the porosity produced by the spray process, and also to refine the microstructure, resulting in mechanical properties meeting the requirements of the standard of this alloy for aircraft applications. The extruded bar and the rotary swaged wires presented both slant and cup-cone fracture, being this phenomena kept after the age treatment in the extruded products, which was attributed to the occurrence of preferential crystalline orientation of the grains during extrusion. This preferential orientation was not removed during the solution heat treatment before aging; on the other hand, the wires were completely recrystallized during solution heat treatment and this phenomenon has disappeared. Hot compression tests were performed with the aim of describe constitutive equations of the material behavior in both conditions previously to conformation (homogenized and without previously homogenization treatment). The hot compression test reveals distinct behaviors of dynamic recovering/hardening during the tests.