The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of impurity level and fabrication processes on the strength, fracture toughness and fatigue resistance of 7075, 7050 and 7175 high strength aluminum forgings. It has been verified that plane strai...
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of impurity level and fabrication processes on the strength, fracture toughness and fatigue resistance of 7075, 7050 and 7175 high strength aluminum forgings. It has been verified that plane strain fracture toughness and fatigue characteristics of a specially processed 7175S-T74 alloy is superior to a conventionally processed 7075-T6/T73, 7050-T74 and 7175-T74 alloys. These beneficial effects primarily arise from two view points, i.e., the effect of reducing the impurity level of iron and silicon has significantly diminished the size and volume fraction of second phase particles such as Al_7Cu₂Fe and Mg₂Si. Futher reduction of the amount of nonequilibrium second phase particles has been observed by applying a special fabrication process.