Effect of Cu Content on the Formability and Portevin-Le Chatelier Effect of Al-Mg Alloys

Al-Mg alloys developed for auto body sheets with different Cu contents were fabricated in the laboratory scale. The effects of Cu content on the microstructures, formability and Portevin–Le Chatelier(PLC) effect of the alloys were investigated by polarizied optical microscopy and room temperature tensile testing. It has been found that with increasing Cu content, there was little change of the strain hardening exponent, but the plastic strain ratio and limiting drawing ratio increased firstly and then decreased. A quantitative statistical analysis of the characteristics of the PLC effect was made, including the stress drop and the reloading time, which follow a common linear relationship with plastic strain, and the increase rate of stress drop and reloading time was bigger with more Cu content. A detailed discussion of the corresponding mechanism of Cu and Cu-containing precipitates on the dynamic strain aging(DSA) was made.