Effects of thickness and surface roughness on mechanical properties of aluminum sheets

The effect of thickness on the mechanical properties of Al 6K21-T4 sheet specimens under uniaxial tension was investigated. In order to reduce the thickness of the specimens without changing the microstructure and grain size, chemical etching was carried out, resulting in Al sheets ranging from 0.40 mm to 1.58 mm in thickness. Additionally, the effect of surface roughness was determined by finite element (FE) calculations performed using FE code MARC 2007. Tensile specimens of varying surface roughness were modeled and simulated. An analysis of the combined effects of the thickness and surface roughness revealed that the yield and tensile strengths decreased when the number of grains over the thickness was decreased. The ductility also decreased when reducing the thickness. An FE simulation showed that both the surface roughness and thickness affected the flow-curve shape. Moreover, the effect of the surface roughness tended to increase when decreasing the sheet thickness of specimens having the same roughness.