The large strain flow stress behaviour of aluminium alloys as measured by channel-die compression (20-500°C)

Two recent methods for obtaining flow stress-strain relations up to large strains of order 1.5 by channel-die compression are presented: i) for sheet metal formability tests, composite samples have been made of glued sheet layers and deformed at room temperature in a channel-die with the compression axis directed along one of the sheet metal edge directions, i.e. RD or TD. The sheet plane is parallel to the lateral compression die face. It is shown that, using a suitable lubricant, the sample deformation is homogeneous up to strains of 1.5. Tests carried out on 5xxx and 6xxx alloys to evaluate the stress-strain relations show that a generalized Voce law gives a good quantitative fit for the data. ii) for high temperature plate processing, quantitative flow stress data can be obtained up to 500 degrees C with a rapid quench using a hot channel-die set-up. Some new results are presented here for high strain hot PSC tests on Al-Mn and Al-Mg alloys together with microstructure analyses.