Influence of Different Torsion Pitch on Microstructural Evolution and Strengthening Mechanism of Al Wires

This paper focused on the effect of pure torsion deformation and various torsion pitches on the mechanical properties of the commercial pure Al wires which has not been examined so far. The initial wires with diameter of 4 mm have been torsion deformed to different pitch length (PL). In order to investigate the effect of gradient microstructure caused by torsion deformation, three different pitch length of 15 mm, 20 mm and 30 mm are considered. The results revealed that the level of grain refinement is correlated with the amount of induced plastic shear strain by torsion deformation. For the wire with pitch length of 15 mm, the grain sizes decreased to about 106 μm and 47 μm in the wire center and edge from the initial size of about 150 μm of the annealed wire. The micro-hardness measurement results show a gradient distribution of hardness from the wire center to the wire surface that confirmed the increasing trend of plastic shear strain obtained by FE simulations. The hardness of annealed sample (35 HV) is increased up to 73 HV at the wire surface for the smallest pitch length. The yield and ultimate tensile strength of the torsion deformed wires are also increased up to about 85 MPa and 152 MPa from the initial values of 38 MPa and 103 MPa of the annealed one respectively while the maximum elongation reduced significantly.