Effect of Chemical Composition and Grain Size on RT Superplasticity of Zn-Al alloys processed by ECAP

Dilute Zn-0.3Al, eutectic Zn-5Al and eutectoid Zn-22Al alloys were processed by multi-pass equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) in order to achieve fine grained (FG) or ultrafine-grained (UFG) microstructure and room temperature (RT) superplasticity. ECAP refined the microstructure of Zn-0.3Al and resulted in a FG Zn-rich.-matrix with an average grain size of 2 mu m and homogeneously distributed nano-sized Al-rich a-particles with the grain sizes in the range of 50-200 nm. A bi-modal microstructure was achieved in Zn-5Al alloy with UFG Al-rich a-and FG Zn-rich.-phases having mean grain sizes of 110 nm and 540 nm, respectively. ECAP brought about an agglomerate-free UFG microstructure in Zn-22Al alloy with an average grain size of 200 nm which is the lowest one obtained so far for this alloy after ECAP processing. The maximum RT superplastic elongations of 1000%, 520% and 400% were achieved for Zn-0.3Al, Zn-5Al and Zn-22Al alloys, respectively. Considering the RT superplasticity in Zn-Al alloys, it was found that lower Al content results in higher superplastic elongations even if the alloy has relatively larger grain size. Grain boundary sliding (GBS) was found to be the main deformation mechanism in region-II as the optimum superplastic region during RT deformation for all three Zn-Al alloys with the strain rate sensitivity factor ranging between 0.25-0.31.