Atom-Probe Tomographic Study of Precipitation in an Ultrafine-Grained Al-Zn-Mg-Cu Alloy (Al 7075)

Abstract

Precipitation-hardened alloys can be further strengthened by reducing the grain size down to the ultrafine regime (<1 μm) and thereby incorporating significant grain boundary (GB) strengthening. The ultrafine-grained (UFG) structure is expected to induce an influence on the precipitation behavior, because of the significantly reduced length scale. Nevertheless, there have been very limited studies on the effect of length scale on precipitation. The present study was undertaken to obtain quantitative information on the differences in precipitation behavior between UFG structure and the traditional coarse-grained (CG) counterpart, and to provide fundamental insights into the underlying mechanisms. Al 7075 alloy, with major alloying elements of Zn, Mg and Cu, was selected for study because of its technological importance and the existing extensive studies on precipitation phenomena in CG Al 7075.

Department(s)

Materials Science and Engineering

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1431-9276

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2013 Cambridge University Press, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Aug 2013

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