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Progress in Natural
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Materials International

Progress in Natural Science: Materials International 26 (2016) 97–102

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Original Research

Enhanced mechanical properties of AZ31 magnesium alloy sheets

by continuous bending process after V-bending
Tingzhuang Hana,b, Guangsheng Huanga,b,c,n, Yougen Wanga,b, Guangang Wanga,b,
Yanchun Zhaoa,b, Fusheng Pana,b,c,nn
a
State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Transmission, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044 China
b
National Engineering Research Center for Magnesium Alloys, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044 China
c
Chongqing Research Center for Advanced Materials, Chongqing Academy of Science & Technology, Chongqing 401123 China
Received 20 July 2015; accepted 2 November 2015
Available online 15 February 2016

Abstract

The effects of V-bending process, continuous bending process and combination process on the microstructure and mechanical properties and
formability of an AZ31 magnesium alloy sheet were investigated. The experimental results showed that no twins were found in the microstructure
of all samples after processes due to the fine grain. The V-bending and continuous bending processes were proved to be an effective approach to
modify the mechanical properties and formability. While the samples after the combination process exhibited better mechanical properties and
formability than the single processed sample. The yield strength significantly decreased with the value of 100 MPa and the fracture elongation
enhanced to 18.3% at room temperature. The Erichsen value was 5.0 mm which was significantly increased by 117% compared with as-received
sample. The superior formability of combination processed samples was mainly attributed to the smaller r-value and n-value.
& 2016 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Materials Research Society. This is an open access article
under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords: AZ31 magnesium alloy; Continuous bending; V-bending; Mechanical properties; Formability

1. Introduction temperature to 473 K). Thus, the basal slip is expected to be

As the lightest metal structural material, magnesium alloys
have recently attracted a lot of research interest because of
their potential application for lightweight structural compo-
nents particularly in electron, automobile industries [1–3].
However, the magnesium alloys always exhibit a poor ductility
and formability at room temperature due to the hexagonal
close-packed (HCP) crystal structure. For magnesium alloys,
the critical resolved shear stresses (CRSS) of non-basal slip
systems on prismatic and pyramidal planes are much higher
than that of a basal slip system at low temperature (from room
n
Corresponding author.
nn
Tel.: +86 23 6511 2239 (G. Huang); .+86 23 6511 2635 (F. Pan).
E-mail addresses: gshuang@cqu.edu.cn (G. Huang),
fspan@cqu.edu.cn (F. Pan).
Peer review under responsibility of Chinese Materials Research Society.
the dominant system at room temperature. But the basal slip
system provides only two independent slip systems, far fewer
than the requirement of five independent systems for homo-
geneous deformation [4–6]. On the other hand, normal rolled
and extruded magnesium alloy sheets generally exhibit a
strong basal texture, i.e. c-axes are mostly perpendicular to
rolling plane. This induces a high normal anisotropy in sheet
and increases the difficulty in deformation accompanied with
thickness reduction, and consequently leads to a very limited
formability at ambient temperatures [7,8].
It has been known that the stretch formability can be improved
by changing the (0002) basal texture. Thus, a great effort has
been devoted to reducing the texture intensity or inclining the
basal poles with the purpose of enhancing the formability. The
equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) processes can produce
texture with a strong basal component located at 451 between
extrusion and normal direction. Kim et al. [9] reported that the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pnsc.2016.01.005
1002-0071/& 2016 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Materials Research Society. This is an open access article under the
CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
98 T. Han et al. / Progress in Natural Science: Materials International 26 (2016) 97–102
ductility of AZ61 Mg alloy bars were improved due to the grain
refinement and texture weakening induced by ECAP. AZ31
magnesium alloy sheets processed by ECAP were investigated
by Suh et al. [10]. They indicated that the drawing depth of the
ECAPed sheet at 225 1C was improved by more than 50% as
compared with the as-rolled condition. Tang et al. [11] analyzed
the texture evolution of AZ31 alloy sheets processed by cross
rolling. They suggested that (0002) basal texture can be
effectively weakened and the ductility and drawability were
significantly improved by cross rolling. The differential speed
rolling (DSR) process was carried out on an AZ31B magnesium
alloy sheets. The Erichsen values of the DSR processed sheet
with an inclination of basal pole in the rolling direction
significantly increased by about 1.5 times at room temperature
[7]. Thus, texture control can effectively improve the formability
of magnesium alloy sheets at room temperature. Furthermore, the
addition of RE elements such as yttrium (Y) [12], neodymium
(Nd) [12], Gadolinium (Gd) [13] and Cerium (Ce) [14,15] can
develop a more random texture enhancing ductility in magne-
sium alloys.
Wang and Huang et al. [6,16] studied the evolution of
neutral layer of AZ31 magnesium alloy during V-bending.
They indicated that twinning dominated the compression
region while the prismatic slip dominated the tension region.
For the previous studies, the authors payed more attention to
the evolution of microstructures, while the effects of V-
bending on formability of magnesium alloy sheets were out
of consideration. For this reason, it is necessary to investigate
systematically the influence of V-bending on formability of
magnesium alloys. In addition, due to the tension–compression
asymmetry between the tension and compression region, the
present work applies a novel continuous bending device to
investigate the influence of continuous bending process on the
microstructure and properties of AZ31 magnesium alloy
sheets. On the other hand, the influence of microstructure
evolution on the continuous bending properties was rarely
studied. Thus, the authors pay attention to the effect of the
combination of V-bending and continuous bending on the
ductility and formability of AZ31 magnesium alloy sheets.
2. Experimental
The as-received AZ31 magnesium alloy sheets (Mg-3 wt% Al-
1 wt% Zn) with a thickness of 0.6 mm, cut into rectangular
samples of 1000 mm
100 mm (length
width), were used in
this investigation. Table 1 shows the chemical compositions of the
as-received AZ31 magnesium alloy sheets. Fig. 1a shows an
abridged general view of V-bending process (VB), where the
Table 1
Chemical composition of AZ31 magnesium alloy sheets (wt%).
Al Zn Mn Si Ni Fe
3.01 0.9 0.5 0.04 0.005 0.005
magnesium alloy sheet was bent on a cylindrical support under a
constant force F and a constant speed v. Due to the different
deformation mode between inner and outer region during V-bend-
ing, the sheets was bent for two passes and the sheet was turned
over and the bending orientation was also changed in the second
pass. Fig. 1b shows the abridged general view of continuous
bending process (CB). The combination bending process is that the
sheet is underwent firstly by V-bending, and then underwent for
continuous bending, named for VBþ CB process. After bending
processes, the samples were annealed at 533 K for 60 min. The
different bent samples followed by annealing were marked as
VBA, CBA and VBþ CBA samples, respectively.
Tensile samples with a gauge length of 40 mm, a width of
10 mm and a thickness of 0.6 mm were machined along the
RD, TD and 451 by wire-cutting. The uniaxial tensile tests
were carried out on a CMT6305-300kN electronic universal
testing machine with an initial strain rate of 1
10  3 s  1 at
room temperature. The tensile test was repeated 3 times to get
representative results. In addition, Lankford values (r-value)
were measured using the samples deformed to a true tensile-
direction strain of 10%. The strain-hardening exponents (n-
value) were obtained from the uniform plastic deformation
region of the tensile stress–strain curves.
The Erichsen tests were carried out to investigate the press
formability of AZ31 Mg alloy sheets at room temperature. The
schematic diagram and geometry dimension of mold are shown in
Fig. 2. The Erichsen tests were conducted on the rectangular
samples with a gauge size 50 mm
50 mm using a hemispherical
punch with a diameter of 20 mm, and the Erichsen values were the
punch stroke at fracture initiation. The punch speed and the blank
holder force were 3 mm/min and 10 kN, respectively. Graphite
grease was used as a lubricant.
Mg
Balance Fig. 1. (a) Schematic diagram of V-bending and (b) schematic diagram of
continuous bending devices.
 T. Han et al. / Progress in Natural Science: Materials International 26 (2016) 97–102
3. Result and discussion
Fig. 3 shows the optical microstructures of different
magnesium alloy sheets. The grain sizes were measured by a
mean line-intercept method to analyze its change. For as-
received sample, the equiaxed grains distributed in the micro-
structure and the average grain size was 6.5 μm, as shown in
Fig. 3a. It is interesting to note that no twins have been found
in the continuous bending, V-bending and the combination
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of mold (rp ¼10 mm; rd ¼ 0.75 mm; Lp ¼ 16.5 mm;
Ld ¼ 13.5 mm).
Fig. 3. Optical microstructures of (a) as-received, (b) CB, (c) VB and (d) VBþ CB samples without annealing.
99
samples, with the average grain size of 6.4 μm, 6.5 μm and
6.8 μm, respectively. The free-twin microstructure can be due
to the small grain size. Huang et al. [17] suggested that the
smaller grain size restricted tensile twinning activity. Li et al.
[18] and also indicated that the compressive deformation
behavior at room temperature depended on grain size.
Cepeda-Jimenez et al. [19] reported that for magnesium alloys,
a transition from twinning-dominated to slip-dominated flow is
often observed at grain sizes of 1–10 μm. The disappearance of
twins could suggest that the slip is the dominate deformation
mode during bending process. Fig. 4 shows the microstructures
of bent samples after annealing. The average grain size are
7.7 μm, 7.8 μm and 8.9 μm for CBA, VBA and VB þ CBA
samples, respectively. It can be seen that the grain sizes
slightly increased for the samples underwent different bending
processes after annealing.
Fig. 5 shows the true stress–strain curves of different
samples obtained in annealed condition. The yield strength
(YS), ultimate tensile strength (UTS), fracture elongation (FE),
r-value and n-value are summarized in Table 2. The average
value of YS, UTS and FE are shown in Fig. 6. Comparing with
the as-received sample, the yield strengths of continuous
bending, V-bending and the combination samples decreased
obviously from 177 MPa to 145, 124, 100 MPa, respectively
(Fig. 6a). While the ultimate tensile strength changed slightly,
as shown in Fig. 6b. The decrease in the YS can be attributed
100 T. Han et al. / Progress in Natural Science: Materials International 26 (2016) 97–102

Fig. 4. Optical microstructures of (a) CBA, (b) VBA and (c) VBþCBA samples in annealed condition.

to the weakened basal texture. A weak basal texture can result

in a large Schmid fact or of the basal slip and can thus lead to a
decrease in YS. The low yield strength of magnesium alloy
sheets can help reduce the spring-back after shape forming.
Fig. 6c shows the fracture elongation of different samples. It
can be seen that compared with the as-received sample, the
fracture elongations of bent samples increased from 13.6% to
14.3%, 15.9%, 18.3%, respectively. The enhancement of the
FE can be attributed to the improvement in the n-value
(Fig. 7b). The larger n-value leads to a lower sensitivity to
strain localization in the form of necking, which helps the
material achieve high fracture elongation without fracture [20].
The r-values and n-values of the samples are shown in
Fig. 7. Compared with the as-received sample, the r-values
Fig. 5. The true strain–stress curves for various samples. decreased significantly after different bending process
(Fig. 7a). High r-values are observed to promote good deep
drawability in many steels. However, for magnesium alloy
with the HCP structure, a low r-value meant a tendency to
Table 2 decrease in the thickness, which could coordinate the deforma-
Mechanical properties of various samples. tion and favored the improvement of stretch formability [21].
Samples YS (MPa) UTS (MPa) FE (%) r-value n-value Yi et al. [22] also indicated that the high r-values of AZ31
alloy sheets could be interpreted as a large mechanical
As-received 177 292 13.6 2.65 0.231 anisotropy and general difficulty of deformation, which
CBA 145 288 14.3 1.85 0.247
resulted in the lower formability and early fracture. The n-
VBA 124 332 15.9 1.30 0.277
VBþ CBA 100 291 18.3 0.97 0.284 values of the samples are shown in Fig. 7b. The n-value is one
of the important factors which control metal sheets' resistance
 T. Han et al. / Progress in Natural Science: Materials International 26 (2016) 97–102 101

Fig. 6. Yield strength (a), ultimate tensile strength (b) and fracture elongation (c) of various samples.

Fig. 7. (a) r-value and n-value of different samples.

to plastic instability. Compared with the as-received sample,
the n-values increased significantly after different bending
process. The sheet after VB þ CB process with annealing
condition exhibited the n-value of 0.284. The high n-value
improves the ability of sheets to resist localized necking, and is
responsible for the increase in the uniform elongation [23].
Generally speaking, a large n-value meant a strong ability to
resist fracture during tension and shape forming. Previous
studies [20,21,24] also indicated that the AZ31 sheets under-
went by different processes exhibited high n-values and the
improvement in n-values enhanced their formability. There-
fore, the AZ31 magnesium alloy sheets undergoing different
bending process exhibited lower r-value and larger n-values,
which favored the improvement of ductility and formability.
102 T. Han et al. / Progress in Natural Science: Materials International 26 (2016) 97–102
Fig. 8. Erichsen values (IE) of various samples.
Fig. 8 shows the Erichsen values (IE) of AZ31 magnesium alloy
sheets underwent different bending after annealing. The Erichsen
values were 2.3, 3.3, 4.2 and 5.0 mm for samples of as-received,
CB, VB and VBþ CB, respectively. It can be seen that the
formability was greatly enhanced for the sheet that underwent
different bending processes followed by annealing. Erichsen value
of VBþ CBA sample was remarkably enhanced to 5.00 mm
(enhanced by 117% compared to the as-received sample), which
can be attributed to the lowest r-value and highest n-value. The
formability was assessed on the basis of plastic strain ratio (r) and
strain hardening coefficient (n) from extensive tensile testing. The
width strain can contribute to the total strain for uniaxial tensile
extension, while the thickness strain is most necessary for stretch
forming under a biaxial tension stress state, and it is believed that a
low r-value and a high n-value can enhance the deformation
capability of sheet forming [25]. In addition, the larger grains may
produce positive effect on formability at room temperature. Chino
et al. [26] and Kang et al. [27] reported that increasing grain size
may enhance cold stretch formability. Thus, the AZ31 magnesium
alloy sheets with larger grains exhibited a lower r-value and higher
n-value, which lead to a superior stretch formability at room
temperature.
4. Conclusions
The effects of V-bending, continuous bending and the
combination of V-bending and continuous bending process
on the microstructure, mechanical properties and stretch
formability of AZ31 magnesium alloy sheets have been
investigated. After the bending process, the microstructure
exhibited well-equiaxed grains without twins, and the disap-
pearance of twins can be related to the small grain size.
Compared with the as-received sample, the bent samples
showed lower yield strengths and higher fracture elongations.
The VB þ CBA sample exhibited lowest yield strength of
100 MPa and the largest fracture elongation (18.3%). For the
Erichsen test, the bent samples showed better formability. The
Erichsen value 5.0 mm significantly increased by 117%
compared with as-received sample. The superior formability
of combination processed samples is mainly attributed to the
smaller r-value and n-value.
Acknowledgment
This work is supported by Fundamental Research Funds for
the Central Universities (No. CDJZR13130081) and Demon-
strative Project of Chongqing Science and Technology Com-
mission (No. CSCT2014FAZKTJCSF50004).
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