Modeling and experimental study of static recovery and mechanical behavior of AA5052 alloy during cold-working and subsequent annealing

In the present study, the mechanical behavior of AA5052 aluminum alloy during cold deformation and subsequent isothermal annealing in a temperature range of 225-300oC was investigated using the uniaxial tensile test data. It is found that by increasing the annealing time and temperature the material yield strength is decreased. The microstructural investigations of the annealed samples show that the grains are elongated and there is no evidence of recrystallization. Hence, recovery is the main restoration phenomenon during the annealing treatment. The work hardening behavior of the alloy during cold work is modeled using a dislocation density based modeling approach and the softening behavior of deformed samples during subsequent annealing is modeled by applying a kinetics equation relating the yield strength to the annealing parameters. The kinetics equation is a nonlinear differential equation and it’s solved numerically by employing Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg (RKF) integration scheme which is coupled with Gauss-Newton nonlinear optimization technique to obtain the material constants of the model. The numerical results are validated using the experimental flow data.