MECHANICAL PROPERTIES AND MICROSTRUCTURAL EVOLUTION OF BIMETAL Al/Br COMPOSITE STRIPS FABRICATED VIA ARB PROCESS

Accumulative roll bonding (ARB) is one of the severe plastic deformation methods that has been investigated in this paper to fabricate bimetal Al/Br composite strips. To this purpose, composite samples were fabricated via ARB process at the ambient temperature. The tensile strength and hardness of the composites increased significantly at the first cycle of the ARB process and then began to improve slowly versus the number of cycles. After the seventh cycle, the tensile strength and hardness of the composites increased by 46% and 85% compared to the annealed Al sample, respectively. Also, the elongation value dropped severely until the second cycle and then, started to improve at a slow rate up to the seventh cycle. The results of the microstructural study of the composites show that Br particles become more uniformly distributed through the Al matrix with an increasing number of cycles (after necking and rapture of Br layers).