Abnormal ductility increase of commercial purity Al during accumulative roll bonding

In this paper, sheets of commercial purity Al were fabricated by the accumulative roll-bonding (ARB) method up to six cycles. To increase the shear deformation, no lubricant was used during the ARB processing and the samples were carried out for ARB processing without any preheat treatment. One interesting finding is that the ductility and strength both increased during the first several cycles of ARB processing. It is proposed that the initial rolling texture might play an important part in the subsequent ARB processing since the original Al sheets for ARB processing have not been subjected to any annealing. The microstructures of the specimens after each ARB cycle were investigated by transmission electron microscopy and correlated with the mechanical properties.