Development Status of Tailored Heat Treatment Technology and Its Application on Sheet Metal Forming of Aluminum Alloys

Aluminum alloys have gained much attention in aerospace, military and automobile applications because of their outstanding properties such as low density, high specific strength, and good damage tolerance compared with the other commercial alloys. However, the formability of aluminum alloy is poor at room temperature, thus a further heating process is necessary to improve its formability and manufacture complex shaped products. On the other hand, this leads to the increase of manufacturing costs and the reduction of production efficiency and poorer surface quality of the product,restricts its application in complex structural components and high-end manufacturing fields. Therefore, the tailored heat treatment technology is used to address the above mentioned issues and significantly improve the formability of aluminum alloys at room temperature. In this paper, the characteristics and technical principles of tailored heat treatment technology for aluminum alloys were discussed. In addition, the influence of th