Deformation behavior of Al-Mg-Si alloy at the elevated temperature

Al-Mg-Si alloy is one of the most popular materials for light-weight automotive components production. Forging and extrusion are the usual processing routes to deal with Al-Mg-Si alloy. Specially, this alloy system has the possibility as the forging materials in the automotive industry as the market place has demanded the reduction of the total weight of car. Even though deformation behavior of Al-Mg-Si alloy has been investigated on the various aspects, however, most works on have focused on the extrusion process, which is relatively clear to understand the deformation characteristics compared to the forging process. In the present study, high temperature deformation behavior of Al-Mg-Si alloy has been investigated by constructing power dissipation map in which work efficiency can be related with microstructural evolution. The controlled compression tests have been done to obtain flow curves at a certain strain rate and temperature region. The effect of microstructural features on the deformation characteristics was carefully analyzed to discuss where the optimum processing windows for forging process is located. Finally, forging have been performed according to the processing window suggested by deformation map. The forging result was discussed in terms of the various features of thermomechanical response of Al-Mg-Si alloy. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.