Scale up and application of equal-channel angular extrusion for the electronics and aerospace industries

Two areas are critical to promote equal-channel angular extrusion beyond the stage of a laboratory curiosity: (i) tool/processing design and scale up; (ii) development of new submicrometer-grained products. Both goals are pursued at Honeywell. The first case is the successful commercialization of ECAE for the production of sputtering targets from single phase alloys in the electronic industry. Blank dimensions are significantly larger than those reported in the literature. Other described applications are targeted to the increase of tensile strength, high-cycle fatigue and toughness in medium-to-heavily alloyed Al materials used in aerospace. In these alloys, the optimal properties can be reached with better understanding of the interplay between plastic deformation and precipitation mechanisms.