Mechanical, stress corrosion cracking and crystallographic study on flat components processed by two combined severe plastic deformation techniques

Although the current field of application of Al–alloy 7075 (AA7075) is vast, it is still limited due to some drawbacks, especially due to its susceptibility to stress corrosion cracking (SCC). This work aims to evaluate the microstructural, mechanical, and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) behaviors on an AA7075 in flat format deformed by a combination of repetitive corrugation and straightening (RCS) and accumulative roll bonding (ARB) techniques. Four different deformation routes were applied, namely: ARB (A), RCS (R), RCS + ARB (RA) and ARB + RCS (AR). As expected, the efficiency for grain refinement depends on the applied route, in terms of average grain size regarding the initial condition IC): AR > A > RA > R. All conditions resulted in unimodal and widened grain size distributions of micro-, submicro- and nano-metric dimensions. The study of crystallographic orientations showed that route R did not generate any new texture, whereas different preferred orientations were obtained for routes A, RA, and AR. The hardness and three-point bending tests showed an improvement of mechanical strength in the following order: AR > RA > A > R. The cracks per cm2 obtained in the corrosion study indicated that the best SCC resistance was R > A > AR > RA. Based on the above, the best combination of microstructural, mechanical, and SCC properties until one deformation pass was obtained by the single route of the ARB process.