Materials Characterization 131 (2017) 201209

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Materials Characterization
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matchar

The eects of heat treatment on the microstructure and cyclic behavior of MARK
A7N01-T4 aluminum alloy
Yi Duana, Jijin Xua,, Jingyao Chena, Chun Yua, Junmei Chena, Hao Lua,b
a
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China
b
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Materials Laser Processing and Modication, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai
200240, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Multi-level tension-compression tests were carried out on A7N01-T4 samples undergoing a series of non-iso-
Cyclic hardening thermal heat treatments beforehand. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Dierential Scanning
Secondary precipitation Calorimetry (DSC) were performed to analyze the evolution of precipitations. Thermal cycles have signicant
Non-isothermal cycle inuence on its plastic constitutive relation. In an interval of peak temperature from 350 C to 450 C, the alloy
Aluminum alloy
re-precipitates a large number of non-shearable and precipitates and mainly presents kinematic hardening
characteristic due to the anisotropy induced by Orowan Loop Helped Reverse Bypass (OHRB) mechanism.
Strengthening precipitates grow coarser below this interval and decompose into aluminum matrix over this
interval, which are in favor of the dislocation shearing and interaction, and lead to an isotropic hardening
behavior of the alloy.

1. Introduction
7XXX series aluminum alloy, as a typical kind of age-hardening
alloy, shows high strength, excellent formability, corrosion-resistance
and good weldability as well as low density. Nowadays, A7N01 is one of
the most ideal structural materials for lightweight vehicles and its
rolled plate on aging temper of T4 has been widely used in the manu-
facture of high-speed train. However, softening phenomenon of welding
joints becomes the bottleneck of its further application in practice. The
researches of Cvijovi et al. [1] and Chen et al. [2] pointed out that
thermal processes inuenced the microstructure of age-hardening alu-
minum alloy dramatically because of changing the dimension and vo-
lume fraction of precipitates in matrix, and led to a comprehensive
decline of mechanical properties. Among that, the strain hardening of
the aluminum alloy and its essential mechanism is a key issue to de-
termine its plastic behaviors, especially for fatigue life. When working
load exceeds yield point, the alloy produces a certain amount of plastic
deformation instead of destroying directly, and with the increase of
cycle times the plastic deformation accumulates constantly and nally
leads to a fracture failure.
Over the decades, the mechanical response of aluminum alloy to
thermal treatment during manufacturing processes such as welding has
drawn increasing attention. Dumont et al. [3] investigated the eect of
process parameters of heat treatment on the compromise between the
toughness and the yield strength of AA7050 aluminum alloy, and found
that coarse intragranular precipitates played a key role in the decrease
of the intrinsic toughness of the grain interiors. Hrnqvist and Karlsson
[4] tested an extruded AA7030 alloy in low-cycle fatigue undergoing
heat treatment. It was been found that the fatigue life was longer in the
NA temper due to its promotion to transgranular cracking. However,
few eorts have been made to focus on the integral behaviors of mul-
tilevel cyclic deformation of 7XXX aluminum alloy. Recently, Bardel
et al. [5] performed a series of cyclic loading tests on aluminum alloy
specimens undergoing dierent thermal cycles to integrate the re-
lationship among heat treatment, strength and strain hardening. But the
material tested was A6061-T6 alloy, whose mechanical performances
and phase evolution are very dierent from that of A7N01 alloy,
especially for dierent initial temper. Hence, the eects of thermal
cycles on the microstructure and cyclic behavior of A7N01-T4 alu-
minum alloy needs more detailed researches.
In present study, non-isothermal heat treatments, representative of
thermal cycles on heat-aected zone (HAZ) of welding joint, were im-
posed on dierent A7N01-T4 specimens to obtain specic welding
microstructures. Quantitative mechanical characterization was per-
formed on these specimens with uniaxial cyclic tension-compression
tests, and then semi-quantitative microstructure analysis were con-
ducted by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Selected Area
Diraction (SAD) and Dierential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). The

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: xujijin_1979@sjtu.edu.cn (J. Xu).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matchar.2017.07.020
Received 5 May 2017; Received in revised form 22 June 2017; Accepted 5 July 2017
Available online 06 July 2017
1044-5803/ 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Y. Duan et al. Materials Characterization 131 (2017) 201209

Table 1
Chemical compositions of A7N01 alloy (wt%).

Si Fe Cu Mn Mg Cr Zn Ti

0.3 0.35 0.2 0.20.7 1.02.0 0.3 4.05.0 0.2

objective of this study is to: (i) investigate strain hardening behaviors of

A7N01 in terms of cyclic deformation; (ii) characterize the relationship
between heat treatment and microstructure evolution as well as its
mechanical properties; (iii) give a reasonable explanation for this re-
lationship.

2. Experimental Methods

2.1. Materials and Heat Treatments

The base material used in this study was commercial A7N01-T4
alloy in the form of a rolled plate of 22 mm thickness and its chemical
compositions were specied in Table 1. The fusion temperature of the
alloy is about 635 C according to industrial production practice.
Standard Low Cyclic Fatigue (LCF) specimens were rstly machined
from the plate with their longest axis taken along rolling direction of
the plate, and then subjected to a serial of thermal cycles up to dierent
peak temperatures of 25 C, 200 C, 250 C, 300 C, 350 C, 400 C,
450 C, 500 C, 550 C, respectively. The heating process of each
thermal cycle was accomplished with an infrared furnace. The dimen-
sions of the furnace chamber are 60 mm 40 mm 80 mm. The
heating rate was set to 15 C/s. During heat treatment, three thermo-
couples were evenly placed along the 20 mm central part and touched
on the surface of specimen to control accurately thermal histories and
assure no temperature gradient along axial direction. Due to low
heating rate and high thermal conductivity, the temperature deviation
between the surface and the center is less than 5 C based on numerical
simulation results, which can be regarded as uniform-temperature zone
during heat treatment. Once preset peak temperature on surface was
reached, the furnace was immediately opened and conducted with
natural air-cooling. The heating device and specimen were shown in
Fig. 1.
2.2. Mechanical Characterization
Once above heated specimens cooled down, cyclic tension-com-
pression tests were immediately conducted on a computer controlled
MTS servo-hydraulic machine at room temperature to avoid natural
aging. During the test, tri-level strain cycles with increasing amplitudes
of 0.5%, 1.0% and 1.5% were performed on a specimen at strain rate of
5 10 4/s, in the way of repeating the same tension-compression
loading under identical amount of strain for 10 times. The strain was
measured by a particular MTS strain gauge and all mechanical tests
were duplicated twice. A typical test process including one heat cycle
Fig. 2. Test process curves at peak temperature 500 C.
and tri-level strain cycles was specied in Fig. 2.
2.3. Microstructure Analysis
Microstructural evolution of the specimens was investigated by
optical and thermodynamic methods. TEM and SAD observations were
conducted on a JEOL-2100F microscope operating at 120 kV. The chips
were cut from the center of cross-section of 20 mm central part, and
thinned by jet polishing in an electrolyte of 10% perchloric acid and
90% ethanol at the temperature of 25 C and the voltage of 30 V.
The continuous process of precipitates evolution of base material
throughout the heating range from 20 C to 550 C was investigated by
DSC test to detect transient phase transformation or secondary pre-
cipitation during heat treatment. The testing device was Germany 204-
F1 thermal analyzer with a continuous heating rate of 80 C/min under
pure argon ow at a rate of 50 ml/min. The sample used for DSC test
was cut from the mechanical specimen at initial T4 state and machined
to a 3 mm 0.5 mm disc with a weight of 8.7 mg.
3. Results
3.1. Cyclic Deformation Behavior
There are two kinds of widely acknowledged constitutive relations
of cyclic hardening in the eld of material mechanics [6]: isotropic
hardening and kinematic hardening. The isotropic hardening means
that the yield surface changes uniformly in all directions such that the
yield stress increases (or decreases) in all stress directions as plastic
strain occurs, which can be described by Eq. (1) [7,8]:
= M(k1 k2 ) (1)

Fig. 1. Heating device and specimen.

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Y. Duan et al.
Fig. 3. Three-dimensional representation of the hardening in isotropic/kinematic model
[10].
where is dislocation density and is ow strain, k1, k2 and M are
material related constants.
The kinematic hardening is often used to model the behavior of
metals subjected to cyclic loading where yielding of the metals is in-
dependent of the equivalent pressure stress. The evolution of backstress
is dened by Ziegler's hardening rule [9]:
pl C Fig. 7 shows the nal result of characterization as a function of peak
= C ( ) +
0 C
pl
where C is the hardening parameter, is the work-hardening slope of
0
the isothermal uniaxial stress-strain response and C is the rate of change
of C with respect to time. The evolution law for the kinematic hard-
ening component implies that the yield surface translates as the
backstress changes, while constraining within a cylinder of
radius 2 3 s , where s is the magnitude of at saturation (large
plastic strains). In result any stress point must lie within a cylinder of
radius 2 3 max since the yield surface remains bounded, schematized
as Fig. 3.
Fig. 4 is a set of cyclic stressstrain curves obtained directly from
practical tests. The curve at 550 C only validates to the beginning of
third cyclic stage due to tensile fracture during test. It is easy to nd
that all curves show cyclic hardening features since the stress amplitude
keeps increasing during test. In isotropic hardening relation, the alloy
strength increases in all directions so the stress increases constantly as
the plastic strain cumulates even in the same strain level of cycles,
which can be seen as the curves at 25 C, 200 C, 300 C, 500 C and
550 C: Firstly, the obvious divergence of cyclic circles in same stage
makes the entire pattern look very disperse and thick; Secondly, the
stress amplitude crossing two dierent strain levels indicates a sig-
nicant increase resulting in a much stronger hardening. Both features
are typical behaviors of isotropic hardening. By contrast, the strength
increases along plastic deformation direction while decreases reversely
in kinematic hardening relation, so the amplitude is not changed under
same strain level. For instance, the curves at 350 C, 400 C and 450 C,
whose tendency are convergent and ultimate hardening amount is
small.
In order to characterize the cyclic hardening behaviors at dierent
peak temperatures in a more perceivable way, the maximum stress
amplitudes were measured within each cycle, and its relationship with
the peak temperatures was plotted in Fig. 5. From an overall perspec-
tive, there are large dierences between low temperature and high
temperature, and a signicant transformation of hardening behavior
happens at 350 C. Locally viewing, it can be noticed that maximum
stress amplitudes under identical strain loads are identical at the initial
Materials Characterization 131 (2017) 201209
stage of cycling, except for 500 C and 550 C, which presents a typical
feature of kinematic hardening. But as the strain goes up to more than
1%, most curves like 25 C, 200 C and 500 C begin showing isotropic
hardening characteristics. The higher the temperature goes, the
stronger the isotropic hardening trend is, which is similar to Bardel's [5]
results. This phenomenon indicates that the limitation surface of
backstress exists and isotropic hardening component takes more and
more important role as deformation accumulates.
The separation of the kinematic and isotropic hardening compo-
nents is traditionally investigated using strain-reversal tests that enable
characterization of the Bauschinger eect [11], referring to a phe-
nomenon where yield stress of material changes with loading direction.
The internal stress < > , the half of dierence between the stress
value at maximum forward stress Fmax and the reverse yield stress
R0.02, is the most eective variation to evaluate Bauschinger eect.
However, internal stress indeed depends on the plastic strain oset. In
this work, the plastic strain oset is set at 0.02% [5]. For the con-
venience of comparison, the relative value of each internal stress < >
was calculated by Eq. (3). It can accurately reect the kinematic com-
ponent of strain hardening while ignore the absolute value of initial
yield strength of samples. The process to obtain the internal stress has
three steps: (i) The true stress vs. true strain curve was plotted; (ii) The
compressive data was reversed and plotted as a function of cumulative
strain; (iii) The elastic strain was removed and the true stress vs. cu-
mulative true strain was regarded as a monotonic behavior. An example
of reverse cycles at 200 C are presented in Fig. 6.
< > = (Fmax R0.02) 2Fmax (3)
(2) temperature. The overall evolution trend of kinematic hardening
component is similar to that of cyclic mechanical curves discussed
above. The higher the peak temperature is, the less the kinematic
hardening contributes, except for the breakpoint at 350 C. Another
interesting point is that the maximum value is no more than 50%,
which means that the isotropic hardening component works on alloy's
hardening throughout all heat treatments.
For cyclic deformation, another important mechanical performance
is its initial yield stress, which can be measured from the rst cycle of
each test. Fig. 8 presents the evolution of yield stress as a function of
peak temperature reached during the thermal cycle. It shows that the
yield stress strongly dependent on the peak temperatures ranging from
200 C to 450 C, which may relate to the equilibrium transformation of
metastable phase. Outside this temperature interval, the variation of
yield stress is small. The yield strength of 500 C specimen even exceeds
that of 450 C, which may be caused by re-precipitation of low-potential
phases like GP zone during natural cooling.
3.2. TEM and SAD Observation
A complex and multi-scale precipitation sequence may occur during
heat treatment, especially for the base aluminum alloy used in this
study, whose initial state is standard-T4 commercial temper. An over-
view of precipitation TEM associated with the peak temperatures is
shown in Fig. 9. It should be mentioned that just several representative
temperatures were selected to explain the microstructural evolution,
since it was very dicult to discern microstructural dierences only by
unaided viewing when two temperatures were close.
In the base material (peak temperature = 25 C), small dot-like and
cylindrical precipitates with a size of less than 50 nm distribute sparsely
inside the lattice grain. Outside the viewing range of this image or in
other micrographs, some irregularly shaped precipitates with unusually
sizes of more than 200 nm appear sometimes, which apparently have
little chance to be strengthening phases. According to additional SEM
and EDS analysis on the surface of TEM samples they may be con-
stituent dispersoids in form of Al10Cr3 or Al-Mn compounds. Similar
constituent dispersoids get observed persistently in earlier literatures,
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Y. Duan et al. Materials Characterization 131 (2017) 201209

Fig. 4. Cyclic stressstrain curves at dierent peak temperatures.

(a) 25 C, (b) 200 C, (c) 300 C, (d) 350 C, (e) 400 C, (f) 450 C,
(g) 500 C and (h) 550 C.

but are not considered to be strengthening particles since their low

Fig. 5. Evolution of the maximum stress amplitude versus cycle number of specimens.
volume fraction and anisotropic distribution [3,12,13]. After heat
treatment of 200 C, precipitate morphologies have a signicant
change. The initial intragranular precipitates have grown coarser and
revealed the tendency of transforming to more stable phases. From the
view of graphical statistic, there is no obvious increase of precipitate
density in the matrix. When the peak temperature comes to 350 C, an
unexpected saltation of microstructure happens, and the whole micro-
graph presents more than four dierent kinds of particles: coarse blocky
particles on the order of 50100 nm randomly dispersing in the view;
massive tiny acicular particles on the order of 520 nm re-precipitate
from the grain; larger cubic ones assembling on the grain boundaries,
and the incipient huge irregular dispersoids sizing more than 200 nm.
The entire precipitation microstructure shows an anisotropy distribu-
tion, which is a key issue for below discussion. Another noticeable
phenomenon is that some precipitate arrangements look like a de-
formed grain boundary shape even inside the grain. It is most likely to
result from grain growth occurring during the thermal cycle, while the
precipitates locating at the prior grain boundaries do not move with the

204
Y. Duan et al.
Fig. 6. Quantication of the Bauschinger eect (oset 0.02% - horizontal red segment) at
200 C. (For interpretation of the references to color in this gure legend, the reader is
referred to the web version of this article.)
Fig. 7. Evolution of kinematic hardening component vs. peak temperatures.
Fig. 8. Yield stress evolution versus peak temperature.
boundaries [13]. Compared with the specimen at 350 C, the precipitate
morphologies at 450 C are more homogeneous and less dense, same as
the distribution of 200 C while its particle shapes are more round.
These results suggest that some pre-precipitated particles have begun
decomposing. Meanwhile, the new re-precipitated particles transform
into stable equilibrium phase and get coarsen. After peak temperature
reached 550 C, most of small-sized precipitates had dissolved into so-
lution, but a small amount of dispersoids still existed in matrix.
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Materials Characterization 131 (2017) 201209
The precipitation sequence of Al-Zn-Mg alloys is generally sum-
marized as [14]: Solid solution (SSSS) GP zones intermediate
phase () equilibrium phase (). The metastable phase (MgZn2) is
semicoherent, and is generally considered to be hexagonal with lattice
parameters a = 0.496 nm and c = 1.402 nm. It exhibits an orientation
relationship with the matrix such that (00.1) // {111}Al, [11.0] //
112Al [15]. The equilibrium phase, a hexagonal structure with
lattice parameters a = 0.515 nm and c = 0.86 nm, exhibits numerous
orientations from the solid solution [16].
To testify if the precipitates are strengthening phases, SAD cali-
bration in TEM was used. The diraction patterns of several re-
presentative specimens were shown in Fig. 10. The electron diraction
spots of main strengthening phases typically appear at 1/3{220}, 2/
3{220}, 1/2{422} plane for reections, and 1/6{220}, 3/6{220}, 5/
6{220}, 1/4{422}, 3/4{422} plane for reection [17]. A series of
strong spots aligning at 1/6, 1/2 and 2/3 (220) both in [011]Al at 25 C
and [111]Al at 350 C matrix projection (Fig. 10a and c) reveal that
these two phases precipitated from matrix. However, their evolution
process under heat treatment is quite dierent. The intensity of spots
(1/6{220}) almost equals to that of spots (2/3{220}) in [011]Al of
Fig. 10a, which means that the pretreatment has simultaneously gen-
erated a number of and precipitates. But the former obviously get
weaker at 350 C than the others resulting from the equilibrium phase
transformation. And from the declining trend of yield strength between
200 C and 450 C, it can be found that stable phase becomes higher
concentrated and contributes more to the yield strength with the in-
crease of peak temperature. When it nally comes to the solution
temperature of 550 C, both kinds of spots disappear, which proves
strengthening phases decomposed into matrix nally. As for another
strengthening phase, GP zone, its diraction pattern is more intricate
and often mingles with spots of other phases because of its coherent
relationship with Al matrix. This phase can be divided into two dif-
ferent types of phases: solute-rich clusters GP(I) typically appearing at
{1,1/4,0} and {1,7/4,0} plane, and vacancy-rich solute clusters GP(II)
typically appearing at 2/5{110} and 3/5{110} plane, or sometimes at
1/3{422} plane [18,19]. It can be found that GP zone still exists in the
specimens undergoing all kinds of heat treatments, even after solution
temperature reached (Fig. 10e). The low cooling rate during natural
cooling induces the re-precipitation of GP zone. The more the pre-
cipitates get dissolved during heating, the higher the supersaturation
degree is, which leads to the larger amount of GP zone. Therefore, the
rise of yield strength at high peak temperature is possible.
3.3. DSC Analysis
Fig. 11 shows DSC thermogram of base material, A7N01-T4 alloy.
The whole curve tends to be endothermic, which is quite dierent from
normal DSC curves of pure solid solution or aged aluminum alloy. A
reasonable interpretation is that some coarse phases with large volume
fraction and high melting point constantly decompose during DSC test,
which results in an extensive endothermic background. The constituent
dispersoids mentioned above observed from TEM images exactly meet
this requirement. In spite of the endothermic background, it is still clear
to be observed that two exothermic peaks and one endothermic peak
occur on the curve, referred as peak A, peak B and peak C. According to
Al-Mg-Zn phase diagram [20], the peak A at 180 C is associated with
the formation of strengthening phase . The following exothermic peak
B at 250 C350 C may be a compound peak corresponding to both the
direct nucleation of the stable phase and the transformation of
phase. The nal endothermic peak at 550 C is the decomposition peak
of phase. However, the formation peak of GP zone supposed to locate
at 120 C disappears, and the intensity of peak A is much weaker than
that of peak B. These phenomena indicate that the precipitation of GP
zone and phase has happened at T4 state before the DSC test.
Therefore, the supersaturation degree of matrix is not enough to drive
the formation of GP zone at low temperature, and the formation peak of
Y. Duan et al.
phase also gets weakened.
4. Discussion
4.1. Inuence of Heat Treatment on Microstructure
The results presented above draw a clear picture of bi-level evolu-
tion of precipitate microstructures across the heat treatments: On the
one hand, pre-precipitated phases undergo severe coarsening and par-
tial dissolution as peak temperature goes up; On the other hand, mas-
sive new precipitates of strengthening phases heterogeneously re-pre-
cipitate from solution at intermediate temperature and undergo the
same process. To elucidate this evolution in a more quantitive way, the
mean size and density of precipitations on TEM micrographs were
measured and analyzed with the help of image software ImageJ. At
least six random pictures of each specimen were examined to ensure the
reliability of results.
The statistic results shown in Fig. 12 prove the assumption again.
Initial T4 material is a stable natural-aging state after full solution
treatment. The precipitates presenting in this material are mainly tiny
GP zones and phase with quite low density, which gets good reec-
tion in TEM observation. Due to the pre-precipitation of GP zones, the
insucient supersaturation of matrix solution reduces its potential
energy for phase nucleation and leads to a higher precipitation
temperature. When the elevated temperature of precipitation is equal
to that of phase, an excessive driving force of combined phase
transformation prompts a vigorous and multi-scaled precipitation in-
stantaneously. This phenomenon can be found at 350 C in Fig. 9,
where the precipitate density is extremely high but mean size is the
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Materials Characterization 131 (2017) 201209
Fig. 9. TEM micrograph of precipitate microstructures varying with
peak temperature: (a) 25 C, (b) 200 C, (c) 350 C, (d) 450 C and
(e) 550 C.
smallest. It also explains the coupling peak between 250 C and 350 C
on DSC curve. Away from 350 C, all the precipitates tend to coarsen
and their density declines when the peak temperatures of heat treat-
ment rise. However, the abnormal increase of precipitation density at
300 C reveals that the beginning temperature of re-precipitation may
be earlier than 300 C.
4.2. Inuence of Heat Treatment on Cyclic Behavior
In essence, the inuence of heat treatment on mechanical properties
depends on the evolution of microstructure. From Figs. 7 and 12, the
relationship between precipitate density and hardening behaviors can
be gured out. The higher the precipitate density, the higher the ki-
nematic hardening is. The more the precipitates get dissolved, the faster
the isotropic hardening accumulates. Traditionally, precipitation con-
tribution on strain hardening can be assessed as Orowan Loops Me-
chanism (OLM), thanks to previous works of Ashby [21], and Brown
and Stobbs [22]. However, this theory only considers unidirectional
movement of dislocation and cannot explain why internal stress gen-
erates under cyclic loads. A possible interpretation is that, in line with
the initial suggestion by Gould [23], the encountering of gliding dis-
locations with opposite Burgers vector brings about the annihilation of
Orowan loops stored around the non-shearable precipitates [6]. This
mechanism is illustrated as Fig. 13. During the last step of forward
strain, dislocations piled up at both sides of a non-shearable precipitate
A, with opposite Burgers vector (assuming the left are negative and the
right are positive), respectively. Dislocation 1 with negative Burgers
vector came over the plane of precipitate A somehow (e.g. cross slip-
ping from the plane of precipitate B). Once backward strain was loaded,
Y. Duan et al. Materials Characterization 131 (2017) 201209

Fig. 10. The SAD patterns and phase calibration of specimens. (a) at
25 C in [011]Al, (b) at 350 C in [001]Al, (c) at 350 C in [111]Al,
(d) at 550 C in [111]Al, (e) at 550 C in [011]Al.

Fig. 11. DSC curve of A7N01-T4 alloy. Fig. 12. Mean size and density evolution of precipitates versus reached temperature.

207
Y. Duan et al.
Fig. 13. Scheme describing OHRB mechanism: (a) the ending stage of forward straining;
(b) the starting stage of reverse straining; (c) the later stage of reverse straining.
the newly generated dislocation began moving towards the precipitate
and got annihilated by a negative dislocation 2 already located at the
left of A. As the backward loads went up, another positive dislocation 5
at the right began moving away from the loop, resulting in the pre-
cipitates A looked like transparent to the mobile dislocation 1 and did
not contribute to the ow stress. This mechanism is Orowan loop
helped reverse bypass (OHRB), and it reects the essence of kinematic
hardening.
The inuences of precipitate size and morphology on strain hard-
ening are more complicated. Since the super-sized dispersoids are un-
avoidably taken into statistics, Fig. 12 cannot precisely reproduce the
size evolution of strengthening phases. For microstructures of 350 C,
400 C, 450 C, the dominant particles are stable , whose incoherent
interface strongly resists the shearing of dislocations. Thus, precipitates
function as OHRB sources during deformation and contribute kinematic
component to strain hardening. Outside this temperature interval, all
cyclic curves show isotropic characteristics but have dierent origins.
For microstructures of 20 C, 200 C, 300 C, the primary strengthening
phases are GP zones and phases, whose strong lattice mist strain
introduces resistance to the onset of dislocation movement while in
favor of the insertion of dislocations. The dislocation shearing is a co-
herent mechanism and contributes component during strain hardening
[24]. As for microstructures of 500 C and 550 C, their properties are
closer to solid solution, where the Forest of Dislocation Interactions
(FDI) dominates [5] and can be also described with the isotropic con-
stitutive relation by Eq.(1). Meanwhile, the multiplication mechanisms
of dislocations like Frank-Read Source (FRS), dislocation climb and
cross-slip [24] aggravate this isotropic hardening trend. In a word, the
morphology and existence of strengthening phases are more decisive
factors on strain hardening behaviors, comparing to precipitate size.
5. Conclusions
A7N01-T4 aluminum alloy samples were subjected to a wide range
of non-isothermal heat treatments leading to various microstructural
appearances. A series of mechanical tests and microstructural
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Materials Characterization 131 (2017) 201209
characterizations were performed to investigate the relation among
thermal cycle, microstructure evolution and cyclic mechanical beha-
viors. The main conclusions of this study are as follows:
(1) The initial state of base material decides the formation of micro-
structure evolution while the thermal cycles play an important role
on the tendency of the evolution. The entire process demonstrates
two parallel evolutions: the growth-decomposition of pre-pre-
cipitated phases and the nucleation-growth-decomposition of re-
precipitated phases.
(2) The overall performance of A7N01-T4 aluminum alloy under cyclic
loadings presents a signicant hardening trend. In the temperature
interval from 350 C to 450 C, the alloy mainly shows a kinematic
hardening characteristics, while away from this interval its cyclic
behavior tends to be isotropic. This phenomenon gets a reasonable
explanation by OHRB, dislocation shearing and interaction me-
chanisms.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant No. 51405297).
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