Comparison of microstructure and mechanical properties of industrial pure aluminum produced by powder metallurgy and conventional rolling

Abstract

Aluminum alloys are produced by different manufacturing techniques and each technique produces a unique microstructure. One of the most versatile manufacturing methods is powder metallurgy (P/M) because it produces a final fine or ultrafine grain microstructure. But it requires powder consolidation and densification processes after P/M. In the other side, Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) is now recognized as a very interesting technique to densify advanced materials with a high potential. The aims of this work are: to produce an AA1100 aluminum billet by powder densification followed by HIP and to compare its microstructure and mechanical properties against the ones of an AA1100 aluminum plate produced by conventional rolling. The mechanical properties were measured using tensile test and Charpy test. The results show that the tensile strength of the P/M+HIP sample is higher than the one of the aluminum plate, but the yield strengths are similar. In the other hand the impact toughness results are very different from each other.