Abstract
A cold roll-bonding process was applied to fabricate an AA1050/AA6061/AA1050 laminate complex sheet. Two AA1050 and one AA6061 sheets of 2 mm thickness, 40 mm width and 300 mm length were stacked up after surface treatment that included degreasing and wire brushing; material was then reduced to a thickness of 3 mm by one-pass cold rolling. The laminate sheet bonded by the rolling was further reduced to 1.2 mm in thickness by conventional rolling. The rolling was performed at ambient temperature without lubricant using a 2-high mill with a roll diameter of 210 mm. The rolling speed was 5.0 m/sec. The AA1050/AA6061/AA1050 laminate complex sheet fabricated by roll bonding was then hardened by natural aging T4) and artificial aging (T6) treatments. The microstructures of the as-roll bonded and the age hardened Al complex sheets were revealed by optical microscope observation; the mechanical properties were investigated by tensile testing and hardness testing. The strength of the as-roll bonded complex sheet was found to increase by 2.9 times compared to that value of the starting material. In addition, the hardness of the complex sheets increased with cold rolling for AA1050 and age-hardening treatment for AA6061, respectively. After heat treatment, both AA1050 and AA6061 showed typical recrystallization structures in which the grains were equiaxed; however, the grain size was smaller in AA6061 than in AA1050.
