Commercially pure Al wires are drawn through equal channel angular dies with simultaneous torsion. The wires are deformed up to an equivalent strain of 1 to 4 at room temperature after several passes. The microstructure evolution of the wires is investigated using optical microscopy at both longitudinal and transverse cross sections. A grain refinement to a mean grain size of 10 to 15 μm is achieved by using this process. Finer grain structure is observed at the edge area of the wires due to the non-uniform strain distribution. The micro-hardness measurement indicates that the hardness distribution is inhomogeneous and increasing from a minimum value at the wire centre to a maximum value at the wire edge. Finite element (FE) results show that by using a channel angel of 160° and an initial wire diameter of 4 mm during one pass, an equivalent plastic strain of about 0.4 at the wire centre and 0.9 at the wire edge can be achieved. The most important advantage of this process is the ability to impose continuous severe plastic deformation to wires. This new hybrid process could be used as an industrial method for continuous grain refinement of wires.
Simultaneous Torsion in the Legendre Family
