Design and analysis of equal-channel angular pressing of Al6061: a comparative study

Equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) technique can perform bulk deformation with nanostructured microstructures in materials. In this study, three-dimensional (3D) finite element simulation and experimentations were performed on Al-alloy. Both simulation and experimental studies were conducted under same boundary condition, i.e. with different processing temperature. The results from both computational and experimental studies were analysed and validated with comparing the effect obtained on microstructure of ECAPed Al-6061. FEM analysis was carried out to study the effect of processing temperature on stress and load. The simulation results show the effect of compression forces exerted over sample after first, second, third till sixth pass, respectively, at both room and elevated temperatures. Microstructural analysis was performed over ECAPed samples in order to get the insights of material behaviour under proposed boundary conditions. The result shows the stress decreases with the increase in process temperature due to ductile behaviour of Al6061. There is a difference in experimental and simulation study for room temperature and elevated temperature of 30.78% and 30.53%, respectively. Microstructural analysis is conducted to draw the relationship between the simulation and experimental results obtained before and after the equal channel angular pressing operation performed on Al 6061 billet.