Influence of various aging treatments on microstructure, strength and corrosion behaviour of high Zn content Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy

In this paper, the influence of T6, T74 and RRA aging treatments on microstructure, strength and corrosion behaviour of high Zn content Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloy was investigated by tensile properties tests, inter-granular corrosion (IGC) tests, exfoliation corrosion (EXCO) tests, polarisation tests, metallographic microscope and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis. The results show that the T74 and RRA temper can increase the size and the distribution discontinuity of the grain boundaries precipitates (GBPs), thus leading to improvement of the corrosion resistance. However, with the coarser matrix precipitates (MPs) relative to T6 treatment, RRA and T74 temper both have a decrease in strength. Besides, all the performances (including mechanical properties and corrosion properties) of the RRA treatment show an intermediate level relative to T6 and T74. Therefore, we can select the appropriate heat treatment process according to the different performance requirements in the industrial production.