Strength and Ductility Improvement through Thermomechanical Treatment of Wire-Feed Electron Beam Additive Manufactured Low Stacking Fault Energy (SFE) Aluminum Bronze

An as-cast macrostructure of electron beam additively manufactured metallic materials was represented by coarse columnar grains whose axes were inclined at 25° with respect to the substrate’s plane. One part of the as-grown samples was annealed to form a coarse grain microstructure while the other part was pre-deformed by forging and then annealed what allowed obtaining recrystallized microstructures with small grains and multiple annealing twin boundaries. This sample showed both high strength and plasticity during the tensile tests. These tensile tests demonstrated also two-stage stress-strain curves as depended on their strain hardening rates. High and low strain hardening rates corresponded to a twinning-dominated deformation at stage II and dislocation-base deformation at stage III. A submicron size strain-induced grain-subgrain microstructure was formed in the vicinity of a necked zone as a result of combined twinning/dislocation grain refining.