Effect of microstructural inhomogeneity on superplastic behaviour of multipass friction stir processed aluminium alloy

Microstructures required for superplasticity were fabricated by intermittent multipass friction stir processing (FSP) in a 6 mm 5086 aluminium alloy plate. Two processing parameters corresponding to two different heat inputs were used. Multipass FSP created a gradient microstructure with fine and coarse grain-depth features on the processed plates. Three sheets of 1.5 mm thickness with different microstructural features were extracted for deformation testing under superplastic conditions: a layer with only fine grains from the nugget layer (NL), a layer with a thermomechanical-/heat-affected layer containing coarse grains (TL), and a composite layer (CL) having both fine and coarse grains in equal proportions. High temperature tensile testing was conducted for different layers between 450–550 °C with strain rates ranging from 5×10−4 s−1 to 1×10−2 s−1 to determine the optimum superplastic conditions. The NL and CL were comparable in terms of ductility with a high m value of 0.44. The maximum ductility values were 325% for NL, 355% for CL and 230% for TL. The high ductility of the composite layers, despite their microstructural inhomogeneity, establishes multipass FSP as an effective bulk processing technique.