Synergy of Ni micro-alloying and thermomechanical processing in Al–Mg–Si–Cu–Zn–Fe–Mn alloys with enhanced bendability

Synergy of Ni micro-alloying and thermomechanical processing on the phase distribution, formability and bendability of Al–Mg–Si–Cu–Zn–Fe–Mn alloys was systematically studied in this paper. With the addition of micro-alloying Ni, the Ni-containing Fe-rich phase can be formed, which not only serves as nucleation sites of Mg–Si precipitates (such as, Q phase) during the casting process, but also improves the uniform distribution level of Fe-rich phases after homogenization. The formability and bendability of Ni-containing alloy can be both improved to a certain level due to the positive effect of Ni micro-alloying. In comparison, if increasing the cold rolling deformation between hot rolling and annealing, the distribution of multi-scale Fe-rich phases can be significantly improved based on the synergy of Ni micro-alloying and thermomechanical processing. And finally, this improvement further results in the great improvements in the microstructure, texture, formability (average r = 0.688, △r = −0.09) and bendability of the alloy together. Based on the microstructure evolution, the synergy mechanism of Ni micro-alloying and thermomechanical processing is put forward in this paper.