Effect Of Crystal Orientation On Mechanical Properties And Electrical Conductivity Of 6101 Aluminum Alloy

The microstructure of the 6101 Al alloy was reshaped by adopting directional solidification(DS), rolling and drawing. After these treatment, the influence of microstructure on electrical conductivity and mechanical properties of reshaped 6101 alloy were investigated.Three temperature(720 ?, 740 ?, 760 ?) were chose to conduct the experiment under the same solidification rate(25 ?m/s). And the microstructure of the samples were observed and found that when the temperature was 760 oC,the microstructure of the alloy was typical columnar grains. Then, at a constant temperature gradient(5.5 K/mm), the directional solidification experiments were conducted with different solidification rates(10, 25, 50, 75, 100 ?m/s). The results indicated that with the increase of solidification rate, the columnar grain grow finer, the electrical conductivity decreased. And at 10 ?m/s, electrical conductivity reached the best. The mechanical properties decreased slightly after directional solidification.The 6101 alloy was conducted plastic deformation experiments. And the results showed that in rolling condition, as deformation increased the grains were elongated. The electrical conductivity was improved. But in a lager amount of deformation, the grains were broken, which led a decrease of the electrical conductivity. In drawing condition, with the increase of the deformation, the grains were elongated too. But because of the special nature of the drawing process, the grains were not easy to be broken, which had a great contribution to the electrical conductivity. When the drawing deformation was 55.6 %, the electrical conductivity was the best, which was increased by 15.5 % compared to the commercial 6101 alloy.