Scripta Materialia 53 (2005) 13571361 www.actamat-journals.

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Physical modeling of equal channel angular pressing using plasticine

R. Manna, Pulkit Agrawal, Sushant Joshi, Basavakumar K. Mudda, N.K. Mukhopadhyay, G.V.S. Sastry *
Centre of Advanced Study, Department of Metallurgical Engineering, Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221 005, India Received 21 June 2005; received in revised form 26 July 2005; accepted 24 August 2005 Available online 15 September 2005

Abstract We report here the results of our physical modeling study of the equal channel angular pressing process using two-colour constituent plasticine workpieces in a metallic die. The workpieces, usually called billets, are made up of discs as well as spherical balls. They are deformed repeatedly with and without changing the orientation between successive passes. Both square and round dies with inner channel intersection angle of 90 are used. The ow patterns are revealed by sectioning the billet after a requisite number of passes. Thorough mixing of the two constituents with a drastic reduction in the section size of each constituent of the plasticine workpiece was observed after 15 passes. The initial shape of the constituents of the billet does not aect the nal ow pattern of the microstructure. Material accumulation of the two colour constituents of plasticine was observed in some regions of the billet along the central region at a low and intermediate number of passes. 2005 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Severe plastic deformation; Equal channel angular pressing; Plasticine; Physical modeling

1. Introduction Equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) is one of the many severe plastic deformation methods that have become very successful in producing nanoscale microstructure in bulk metals and alloys. Inducing a high degree of plastic deformation without any appreciable external shape change of the billet is the central theme of ECAP and other severe plastic deformation methods [1,2]. The high amount of stored energy may lead to either dynamic recovery or may yield nanoscale structure upon short annealing at temperatures much lower than the normal recrystallisation temperature. Many aspects of the material and the die design, such as the coecient of friction between the die wall and the workpiece, have a great inuence on the nal structure. The process, developed nearly two decades ago [3], involves repeated deformation and accumulation of the

Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 542 2369346; fax: +91 542 2369478. E-mail address: gvssastry2000@yahoo.com (G.V.S. Sastry).

strain in the feedstock in the form of a billet (about 10 20 mm in cross-section and 70 mm long) [1,2]. The process has been extensively studied in recent years because of its potential for direct adoption by the metal forming industry and for its ability to enhance the mechanical properties. There have been a limited number of modeling studies using the nite element method to examine the nature of deformation during ECAP with emphasis on parameters such as uniformity of ow, corner gap, coecient of friction [49]. Only limited work is available on physical modeling [913]. Physical modeling with a suitable material is important since a clear observation of the material ow pattern during ECAP, the eect of mould wall friction and a true-to-nature representation of the starting microstructure of the feedstock are all possible by this method. However, it suers one disadvantage in that the model material selected, generally plasticine, may not have mechanical behaviour identical to a metal (for example, there is no work hardening). Wu and Baker [9] have ECAPed two-colour plasticine through a Plexiglas die of minimal friction where the internal die channel angles are

1359-6462/$ - see front matter 2005 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.scriptamat.2005.08.031

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90 and 120. The orientation of the billet was not changed during successive passes. They observed the eect of die angle, the shape of channel corner and to some extent the surface friction eect on the ow pattern. An almost uniform ow pattern was obtained in their study. The die surface eect on the ow pattern (top and bottom surfaces) was minimal. No sectional views of the billet were shown. The present work was aimed at physical modeling with a plasticine billet of two colour constituents using a metal die of high frictional coecient. The same die would be used for processing of metallic billets. Internal details of the deformed plasticine billets were revealed by sectioning the billet. In some of the experiments the billets were rotated by 90 between successive passes. 2. Experimental procedures Two dierent dies of 10 mm diameter and 12 mm 12 mm square cross-section were used for this study. The schematic diagram in Fig. 1 illustrates the die shape of the square die, the orientation of billet and associated terminology while the die shape for the circular die with the billet is shown in Fig. 2(a). Both the dies were fabricated with an inner channel-intersection angle, U = 90 and an outer channel-intersection angle, W = 0. A high degree of surface nish was maintained in the channels. Three types of workpieces were prepared for the present study. They were made of (i) square discs of 12 12 mm and 5 mm thickness, (ii) circular discs of 10 mm diameter and 5 mm thickness and (iii) spherical balls of 23 mm diameter. All the three workpieces were made of two constituents. A reason for selecting round balls of plasticine is to closely approximate the equiaxed grains in metals. The billets were made by alternately stacking the discs of two colours in the die cavity as shown in Fig. 2(a). In the case
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of square die for equal channel angular pressing process.

of spherical balls of two colors, the workpieces were made by taking the two colour balls in equal proportion and pressing them lightly to ll the die cavity. The crosssection of such a billet is shown in Fig. 2(b) prior to deformation. These workpieces were subsequently deformed using the square die. One set of workpieces was repetitively pressed without any change in orientation and the set is designated as being deformed by process A; another set in which the workpieces were rotated by 90 (always in the counter clockwise direction) between two successive passes is denoted as being deformed by process bcc. Both the processes are described in detail by Furukawa et al. [2]. Macrostructures of the sections were recorded by normal and digital photography after releasing the workpiece from the die. The workpieces were deformed through respective dies at a constant speed of 1 mm/s.

Fig. 2. (a) Plasticine disc assembly in circular mould cavity before deformation. (b) The two matching surfaces of the vertical section of plasticine billet made of 23 mm diameter ball compact before deformation by equal channel angular pressing.

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3. Results and discussion The starting assembly of the two-colour plasticine constituents in the form of discs inside the split die cavity is shown in Fig. 2(a). The vertical sections of the workpieces subjected to process A after one, two and three passes are represented in Fig. 3(a)(c), respectively. One observes that the deformation takes place right in the rst pass by shear. There is also a certain degree of bending of the constituent layers, which can be attributed to the friction at the die wall. One notices two other eects here: Firstly, that the degree of deformation is highest at the bottom surface (refer to Fig. 3(a)) of the workpiece, as evidenced by the thin green layer on this side of the workpiece (marked by an arrow) and secondly there is material accumulation at the last green disc (shown by double arrows). By material accumulation we mean that the thickness of the disc increases from the initial value of 5 mm. As the number of passes increases from 1 to 3 the ow patterns become more complex than the simple shear with slight bending in the rst pass. Fig. 3(b) and (c) show that the discs now take the shape of coaxial cups with their rims anchored at the trailing end (TE), an aspect which is very clear in Fig. 3(b) (marked by arrows). Such deep drawn cup shapes with rims anchored at the TE are a clear indication that friction between the die wall and the workpiece continues to play a role in deformation (see Fig. 3(d)). The thin layer at the outer surface due to frictional forces continues to persist right up to 15 passes, as can be observed in the later gures. The patterns obtained in the present case are signicantly dierent from those of the physical modeling by Wu and Baker [9] and are also dierent in some respects from those of the nite element modeling by Oh and Kang [8] and Zhernakov et al. [11]. In the case of Ref. [9] a more uniform

pattern of deformation was obtained when compared to the present study and this could be understood in terms of the minimal friction oered by the Plexiglas die used by Wu and Baker. As the number of passes increases, the

Fig. 4. Plasticine billet after 15 passes, matching surfaces of vertical section (a) without rotation, process A. (b) With 90 rotation between successive passes, process bcc. (Note: The cracks in the billet shown in the bottom picture of (a) were due to the billet drying up outside the die and were not a consequence of deformation.)

Fig. 3. Plasticine billet of circular cross-section, made from circular discs of 10 mm diameter and 5 mm height, matching surfaces of vertical section after (a) one pass, (b) two passes, (c) three passes; (d) matching surfaces of vertical and horizontal sections after two passes. All billets were deformed by process A.

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Fig. 5. Plasticine billet made of balls, after two passes: (a) matching surfaces of horizontal section (I) at 1/4 height from bottom, (II) at 1/2 height and (III) at 3/4 height; and (b) matching surfaces of vertical cross-section (I) 1/4 width from left surface, (II) 1/2 width and (III) 3/4 width. All billets were deformed by process A.

strain and consequently the renement in section size of the constituents increase. The degree of deformation varies from a maximum at the bottom surface to a minimum at the central region with an intermediate degree of deformation at the top surface. The frictional eect at the top and bottom surfaces is high enough that, apart from simple shear in the central region, layers get bent towards the top and bottom surfaces and take a cup shape. Layers get pulled near to the surface due to high friction. Internal details clearly show some material accumulation close to the leading end (Figs. 3(a) and 4(a)). Fig. 3(d) further shows that strain in the horizontal section is lower than that in the vertical section, supporting the above-mentioned argument. After undergoing a sucient number of passes, 15 in the present study, the workpiece shows a very high degree of renement and a thorough mixing of the two colour layers as shown in Fig. 4(a). Some regions of material accumulation are present even after 15 passes. A 10-times renement in size of the constituents is obtained by 15 passes as the strips have reached a typical thickness of 0.5 mm. By adopting process bcc we are able to obtain a much higher degree of mixing and renement with almost no material accumulation and most of the layers become discontinuous.(Fig. 4(b)). Oh and Kang [8] have analysed the ECAP process using pure Al and 5083 Al. They observed in both cases, i.e. with or without friction, the strain is maximum at the top surface, intermediate at the midsection and lowest at the bottom. They modeled their data obtained by putting mesh on an aluminium billet using the nite element method. However our observation on the plasticine billet was dierent: thinning of the constituent is lowest at centre, intermediate at the top surface and highest at the bottom surface. Zernakov et al. [11] ECAPed a Cu billet with an Al plug inserted perpendicular to the longitudinal axis. They observed that the Al plugs got slightly bent at the bottom surface and made an angle with the axis of the billet. This indicates that deformation occurred by pure shear and bending at the bottom surface due to friction. However, in our plasticine model the plasticine tablets were deformed dierently at dierent heights. Though their results match our nding that maximum strain occurs at the bottom surface, it does not clearly bring out the dierent degrees of deformation at dierent heights as observed in the present study.

The vertical sections of compacted samples of twocolour plasticine balls of 23 mm diameter are shown in Fig. 2(b). The processing method A is adopted in this case. Fig. 5(a) and (b) show the horizontal and vertical section of the workpiece made up of the balls after two passes. The macrostructure contains a lamellar structure of plasticine in the vertical section while the horizontal section shows an intersection of these lamellae. This indicates that a lamellar structure is obtained after a few passes, irrespective of whether the starting structure is made up of discs or balls. This brings to our attention an essential point that the ow pattern during ECAP is independent of the starting grain shape. This observation has a bearing on the microstructural renement of two-phase lamellar eutectics. 4. Conclusions Physical modeling of the ECAP process using plasticine has brought out the following points that will help in optimizing the conditions for metallic alloys. 1. The initial shape of the constituents of the billet does not aect the nal renement of the microstructure. 2. A good number of passes (15 in the present case) are required for thorough mixing of the constituents and microstructural renement. 3. At an intermediate number of passes, material accumulation takes place in certain regions of the workpiece and hence the workpiece needs to be sectioned after the requisite number of passes and the uniformity of the microstructure veried. Acknowledgement Invaluable comments and constructive comments by the reviewer are gratefully acknowledged. References
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