Forming limits of magnesium alloy AZ31B sheet at elevated temperatures

Magnesium alloy sheets usually has to be processed by warm forming, and change of strain path and evolution of microstructure can significantly influence their warm formability. Forming limit test for an AZ31B alloy sheet under strain path changes was configured and implemented, and the effects of strain paths and microstructure evolution on the forming limit diagram are investigated. The sheet was pre-strained under in-plane uniaxial, plane strain and biaxial tension loading paths at 150 °C, 200 °C and 300 °C, followed by hemispherical punch stretching experiments at the three temperatures using specimens extracted from the pre-strained samples. A crystal plasticity model that incorporates dynamic recrystallization (DRX) and annealing recovery was combined with the Marciniak-Kuczyński (M-K) approach to calculate the FLDs. The evolution of dislocation density during annealing in the pre-strained FLD test at 200 °C was evaluated, through which the predictions of pre-strained FLDs were considerably improved. The present work provides experimental as well as crystal plasticity based methods for evaluating warm formability of magnesium alloys influenced by temperature, pre-straining, DRX and recovery.