Ultra-fine grain structures in aluminium alloys by severe deformation processing

Severe deformation processing is an emerging technique, for the production of submicron grain structures in metallic alloys, that involves plastic deformation to ultra-high strains (typically εvm>7). Severe deformation processing has several advantages over other techniques for producing materials with ultra-fine grain structures, in that it is relatively inexpensive, can be used to process conventional alloys, and can potentially be scaled up to produce large quantities of material. In this paper, the mechanisms by which grain refinement takes place during severe deformation and the effect of the material and process variables on the microstructural evolution in Al-alloys are discussed.