Iranian Journal of Materials Science and Engineering

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The hot deformation behavior of the heat-treated AA6061 and AA 6063 aluminum alloys by T6-1, T6-2 artificial aging treatment, and O annealing treatment were studied by compression testing over a temperature range of 350–550  and strain rates of 0.005-0.1 s^-1. It was observed that the flow stresses of the studied aluminum alloys treated by the T6-1 and T6-2 heat treatments were significantly higher than those of the O annealing treatment. Moreover, the stress-strain curves of the heat-treated alloys by the T6-1, T6-2, and O heat treatments demonstrated significant softening during deformation at the lowest strain rate under any of the deformation conditions. For several strains, the activation energy of hot deformation was specified and obtained to vary significantly with strain for the heat-treated alloys by the T6-1 and T6-2 treatments. The stress-strain data calculated from a linear equation, with strain-dependent parameters, shows a great fit with the experimental data for the heat-treated aluminum alloys.

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In this study, the effects of heat treatment of aluminum alloy on the tube bending process were investigated in the rotary draw bending process. As two experimental and numerical simulation methods were used to determine the wall-thinning, ovality, and spring back for extruded, annealed, and aged AA6063 aluminum alloy tubes in different bending angles and bend radii. Numerical simulations were done by the finite element method with Abaqus software. The results indicated that in comparison with annealed and extruded parts, wall-thinning reduced whereas the amount of ovality and spring-back increased in the aged tubes. Also, in each case, the percentage of wall-thinning decreased with increasing bend radius, and the effect of bend radius was greater in the reduction of ovality from the bending angle. Investigations showed that the spring-back rate also decreased with an increasing bending angle.