Continuous frictional angular extrusion and its application in the production of ultrafine-grained sheet metals

A novel continuous severe deformation processing technique, continuous frictional angular extrusion (CFAE), has been developed for producing ultrafine-grained materials with high productivity. An investigation into the feasibility of this technique for processing sheet metals has been carried out using commercially pure aluminium. A uniform ultrafine-grained structure with an average grain size of ∼0.6 μm was achieved in the material after a true strain of 6.6. The evolution and homogeneity of the deformation structure and texture during processing are reported. © 2006 Acta Materialia Inc.