Institute of Metals Division - Plastic Anisotropy in Magnesium Alloy Sheets

Sheets of the magnesium alloys AZ31B, HK31A, and ZE10A in several different tempers were tested in tension and determinations were made of the ratio of width-to-thickness strain. A marked increase in the ratio with tensile straining and a dependence upon alloy and test direction are rationalized in terms of a balance between the amounts of basal and prism-plane slip. All such variations are related, in turn, to the prevailing crystallographic texture. Fracture appearance is explained on the basis of anisotropy in plastic flow, and implications for developing texture -hardening effects in these alloys are discussed. ThE crystallographic texture or preferred orientation of a given material is determined by details of processing history. Such texture is known to influence many aspects of material behavior, in particular both the yielding and strain-hardening characteristics which are of special interest in the present work. Traditionally, the resulting plastic anisotropy has not been regarded as especially desirable. Earing in drawn sheet is perhaps the most common example of an unwanted effect of texture. However, it has also been recognized that suitable textures may be usefully employed to improve drawability,1,2 as a specific example, and generally to control yielding resistance under combined-stress loading.374 Texture would seem to be a detail of structure not yet exploited to nearly the fullest extent. A convenient basis for characterizing anisotropy in plastic behavior is the ratio of width-to-thickness strains obtained in a tension test;5&apos;6 the parameter is frequently labeled "R" and its value is revealing with respect to the nature of the prevailing texture. R gives a useful measure of a material&apos;s "thinning resistance". For an isotropic material, R = 1. With R > 1 the increased through-thickness strength in a sheet means greater resistance to yielding under biaxial tension, or "texture hardening";3&apos;4 if R < 1 the result may be a "texture softening" under the same loading conditions.4 Most R data relate to steel sheets for deep-drawing applications. Values for steel and other materials of cubic structures are not often much greater than 1 and nearly constant with strain in testing.1,2,7,8 To explore the implications of plastic anisotropy further, it was felt that experiments with much more strongly textured materials would be useful, and this led to the choice of magnesium alloys. The "ideal" sheet texture for magnesium contains the (0001) plane in the rolling plane, which ought to lead to R values approaching infinity. However, departures from the ideal texture, the possibility of slip in non-close-packed directions, and deformation by twinning would all be expected to introduce some range of R. Accordingly, studies on these materials were undertaken. EXPERIMENTAL Alloys in sheet form, Table I, were selected to obtain a variation in crystallographic texture, in the expectation that this would be reflected in differences in plastic anisotropy. Pole figures constructed by the Schulz surface-reflection technique9 were provided with the experimental materials by the Dow Metal Products Co. Profiles of pole density along great circles through the rolling (0 deg) and transverse (90 deg) directions were prepared from the pole figures and are collected in Figs. 1 and 2; considerable departure from the "ideal" (0001) alignment in the rolling plane is evident, with the largest angular spread in both directions being found in the ZEl0 alloy. Results of tensile tests on full-thickness specimens of 6-in. gage length by 1/2-in. width are given in Fig. 3 as engineering stress-strain curves* in rolling and transverse directions. All tests but one were made at a constant drive rate of 0.02 in. per min, and the final values of percent elongation at fracture, over the initial 6-in. gage length, are noted at the ends of the curves; one test on ZE10A-