[Back]

A. Hatab, A. Falahati, A. Danninger:
"Contribution Of Individual Hardening Process Parameters On Mechanical Properties Of 6061 Aluminum Alloy - Taguchi Approach";
in: "Proceedings of METAL 2014", TANGER Ltd., 2014, ISBN: 978-80-87294-52-9, 7 pages.

The commercial age hardening Al-Mg-Si (6061-type) alloys find a wide range of applications as structural material in automotive industrial, due to the favorable combinations of good mechanical properties, formability and excellent corrosion resistance. However, the precipitation hardening of the alloy is sluggish and its acceleration would be beneficial in improving the alloy properties. There are several ways to accelerate the precipitation process, fast quench and/or deformations (stretching) are among those processing techniques in producing excess vacancies, which may enhance the transformation rates of precipitating strengthening phases in the alloy. The individual effects of hardening process parameters on aging response and mechanical properties of Al-Mg-Si (6061-type) are carried out by employing Taguchi approach. The L9 orthogonal array (OA) is selected with 4-parameters, namely, quenching media, delay time before stretching, stretching steps and delay time after stretching, and 3-levels for each parameter to determine the most influential parameter and to optimize mechanical properties when the alloy is artificially aged. The obtained results show that the combined mechanism of precipitation hardening and strain hardening in the optimal levels improve the alloy aging response and thus mechanical properties, for this set of experiments.

Aluminum Alloys, age hardening, stretch process, Taguchi Method.