A Study on Fatigue Crack Propagation for Friction Stir Welded Plate of 7N01 Al-Zn-Mg Alloy by EBSD

EBSD (electron backscattered diffraction) was used to study the fatigue crack propagation mechanism in a friction stir welding joint of a 15 mm-thick 7N01 aluminum alloy plate. Crack tips with detailed features were clearly characterized by EBSD images. The plastic zone caused by crack was small in the stir zone. Due to the fine grain strengthening in the stir zone, there were several lattice distortion regions which were observed in the BC (band contrast) map but disappeared in the SEI (secondary electron image). In the stir zone, fatigue crack tends to awake and grow along grain boundaries, and propagate with little deformation of the grains. When the crack tries to grow across a boundary, the deformation of the plastic zone at the crack tip shows little correlation to the cyclic loading direction. However, the plastic zone in base metal, the rolled plate, is large and continuous, and no obvious lattice distortion region was found. According to Schmidt factor, the base metal near crack is fully deformed, lots of low angle boundaries parallel to the cyclic force can be observed. The base metal showed a better ability for fatigue crack propagation resistance.