In this study, ultrafine grain (UFG) SS316L was produced using an equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) process at two different die angles namely 120° and 126°. The effect of different die angles on mechanical, corrosion, and surface properties were thoroughly investigated. Furthermore, the subsequent effect on the cytotoxicity of SS316L was investigated. The microstructure observation shows ECAP processing has produced an elongated, finer grain size at 120° than 126°. The ECAP processing also increases the hardness of SS316L. There is no change in wettability and surface roughness observed. However, the ectrochemical measurement reveals that ECAP processing improves the corrosion resistance of SS316L. The cytocompatibility of ECAPed SS316L was evaluated by both a direct and an extract methods, finding the contribution of grain refinement by ECAP processing.
Equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) is one of the popular severe plastic deformation processes used to produce bulk nanostructured materials. The degree of homogeneity of nanostructured is affected by various die parameters. In this paper, the effect of internal die angle (ϕ) and number of passes (N) on the strain behaviour of Aluminium Alloy 6061 (AA6061) during ECAP was investigated by using three-dimensional finite element analysis. The effect of number of passes and die angle on the homogeneity within the workpiece was analysed in terms of contours, radial view contour and inhomogeneity index. The analysis is done by comparing workpiece extruded up to 8 passes at die angle of 120° and 126°. It is observed that the resulting strain is higher at 120° die. However, the inhomogeneity index is decreasing in a similar pattern in both dies. The simulation results shed some lights on the optimum design of ECAP die for homogeneous microstructure.
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