The microstructure evolution during recently developed severe plastic deformation method named repetitive tube expansion and shrinking of commercially pure AA1050 aluminum tubes has been studied in this paper. The behavior of the material under repetitive tube expansion and shrinking including grain size and dislocation density was simulated using the finite element method. The continuous dynamic recrystallization of AA1050 during severe plastic deformation was considered as the main grain refinement mechanism in micromechanical constitutive model. Also, the flow stress of material in macroscopic scale is related to microstructure quantities. This is in contrast to the previous approaches in finite element method simulations of severe plastic deformation methods where the microstructure parameters such as grain size were not considered at all. The grain size and dislocation density data were obtained during the simulation of the first and second half-cycles of repetitive tube expansion and shrinking, and good agreement with experimental data was observed. The finite element method simulated grain refinement behavior is consistent with the experimentally obtained results, where the rapid decrease of the grain size occurred during the first half-cycle and slowed down from the second half-cycle onwards. Calculations indicated a uniform distribution of grain size and dislocation density along the tube length but a non-uniform distribution along the tube thickness. The distribution characteristics of grain size, dislocation density, hardness, and effective plastic strain were consistent with each other.
