Mechanical properties and machinability of 6061 aluminum alloy produced by equal-channel angular pressing

Equal-channel angular pressing is a process used for the effective improvement of certain mechanical properties of various metallic alloys by producing an ultrafine-grained microstructure, although subsequent machining may be necessary in some cases for practical applications. The objective of this article was to investigate the mechanical properties and machinability of a 6061-T6 aluminum alloy produced by equal-channel angular pressing on different routes. Equal-channel angular pressing was found to improve not only hardness in certain specimens tested but also the strength of others as revealed by tensile tests. Moreover, the two most important machinability criteria, that is, cutting forces and surface roughness, were measured to find a significant reduction in cutting forces. The specimens produced by the process indeed exhibited better machinability properties as required by the cutting force criteria. Finally, a significant improvement was observed in the surface roughness of equal-channel angular pressing-produced specimens.