Continuous processing of ultrafine grained Al by ECAP-Conform

In this paper, we report a new severe plastic deformation (SPD) technique, which combines equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) with Conform, to process ultrafine grained (UFG) materials in a continuous manner. ECAP in its original form can only process short metal bars and is labor intensive. Conform is a technique that has been used to continuously form metals into various shapes. By combining these two techniques, we were able to produce UFG structures in an Al wire and to significantly increase its strength. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.