Precipitation strengthening in AA7449 aluminum alloy: understanding the relationship between microstructure, yield strength and strain hardening

This paper presents a detailed study of the microstructure and mechanical properties of AA7449 alloy during the two step heat treatment leading to the industrial T7651 temper. It is first shown that reproducing the heat treatment without a deformation step as used in the T7651 industrial temper leads to 2-fold decrease of the precipitation kinetics due to the absence of dislocations, while the resulting mechanical properties (if this change in kinetics is accounted for) are very similar. The work hardening rate is shown to strongly evolve during the heat treatment, and this evolution has been correlated to the evolution of microstructure using a Kocks-Mecking-Estrin analysis. Finally, an analysis in terms of activation volume of the strain rate sensitivity allows for the determination of the dislocation / precipitate interaction in the overaged temper.