Flange height and lip accuracy are generally restricted by the formability of sheet metals in the conventional hole-flanging operation. A new hole-flanging process, named upsetting-flanging process, was proposed to obtain a more substantial flange from thick plate. The finite element method (FEM) with DEFORM was utilized to simulate the novel upsetting-flanging process and the influence of geometric parameters on the flange height was studied in details. A series of flanging experiments with A1050P-O were carried out to validate the FEM results, and the variations of Vicker hardness in the plate section were discussed. The results showed that the newly upsetting-flanging process revealed higher flange height and better lip accuracy than the conventional hole-flanging process, and the results between FEM simulations and experiments showed good agreement. Besides, the hardness of the plate around the flange part increases due to the work hardening after the upsetting-flanging process, which reveals better superiority in strength for the subsequent machining or assembling processes.

The automobile suspension parts of a high strength 6xxx aluminum alloy were produced using a novel technique known as near net shape casting for forging stock preparation. Based on the outline dimension of the forging stock, the shape of the ingot was designed as the near net shape and its casting process was studied by the numerical simulation and experimental investigation. The results show that the shrinkage of the ingot was highly correlated to its shape parameters and could be successfully forecast by the stimulation model. The casting parameters of the near net shape ingot were optimized and the near net shape 6xxx aluminum alloy ingots free of defects were cast in the laboratory. In order to obtain high performance forged suspension parts, the hot compression tests of the ingot were carried out. The results show that the subgrain fraction of the forged ingot was strongly affected by Zener-Hollomon parameters (Z parameters). The intermediate Z parameters, 1.09×10¹⁶ s^-1, will contribute to the larger number fraction of subgrains inside the forged ingot, which contributes to the high performance of the forged products.

An explicit integration scheme for rate-dependent crystal plasticity (CP) was developed. Additive decomposition of the velocity gradient tensor into lattice and plastic parts is adopted for describing the kinematics; the Cauchy stress is calculated by using a hypo-elastic formulation, applying the Jaumann stress rate. This CP scheme has been implemented into a commercial finite element code (CPFEM). Uniaxial compression and rolling processes were simulated. The results show good accuracy and reliability of the integration scheme. The results were compared with simulations using one hyper-elastic CPFEM implementation which involves multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient tensor. It is found that the hypo-elastic implementation is only slightly faster and has a similar accuracy as the hyper-elastic formulation.

Low frequency electromagnetic casting(LFEC) process with the application of an induction coil outside the conventional direct chill (DC) casting mould was used to prepare the flat ingot of 2524 alloy and the effect of electromagnetic field on the microstructure and macrosegregation of this alloy was systematically studied. The results show that the flat ingot prepared by the LFEC process has a finer and more uniform as-cast microstructure and the grain morphology is transformed from dendrite and rosette-like to equiaxed structure. The LFEC process also shows a significant effect on macrosegregation, and with the application of electromagnetic field during casting process, the segregation in the centre of the ingot is obviously reduced. The mechanism of these effects was also discussed.

Effect of ultrasonic melt treatment on the macrostructure of solidified high purity aluminum was studied experimentally using metallographic method and complementary numerical calculations of acoustic pressure and velocity distribution in the melt. The results reveal that the macrostructure is effectively refined within a cone-shaped zone ahead of the irradiating face. Inner crystals along with wall crystals multiply particularly within the effectively refined zone and they contribute equally to structure refining. Isothermal holding after ultrasonic melt treatment results in loss of nucleation potency for nearly a half of nuclei, indicating that ultrasound activated heterogeneous nucleation may be as equal important as homogeneous nucleation for ultrasonic induced structure refining.

Al-1.0%Sc-1.0%Zr (mass fraction) master alloy was prepared at different cooling rates. The morphology and thermodynamics data of the primary particles of the master alloy were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). It shows that the primary particles are dendrite-shaped particles comprised of several attached small cubic, cusped-cubic or crucifershape particles at slow cooling rate. However, the primary particles are separated with crucifer shape at intermediate cooling rate, and they are cubic with cusped-cubic shape at high cooling rate. Meanwhile, the separated and attached particles present Al₃Sc/Al₃Zr_1-xSc_x core-shell structure. The formation mechanism of the structure was systematically investigated by a mathematical model.