Severe plastic deformation by Constrained Backward Flowforming

The last decades have seen several attempts to develop Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) processes to manufacture parts with Ultra-Fine Grained (UFG) microstructure without additional thermal processing. However, they remained mostly focused on producing small components, often in the micro-scale range, thus limiting the technological and environmental impact of SPD techniques. The paper introduces a new approach to produce large size UFG metal sheets which main innovation lies in a constrained flowforming process that allows obtaining large deformations under high hydrostatic pressure. Metal sheets with isotropic grain distribution and average grain size of 4 mm were manufactured by this process chain and their mechanical properties assessed.

Automated summary

This paper introduces a new approach to produce large size ultra-fine grained (UFG) metal sheets using a constrained flowforming process under high hydrostatic pressure. The metal sheets manufactured by this process have an isotropic grain distribution and an average grain size of 4 mm.