Local deformation and texture of cold-rolled AA6061 aluminum alloy

Using cold rolling, we plastically deform AA6061 sheets at room temperature and investigate the variations of the microstructures, textures and local deformation of the cold-rolled AA6061 sheets as functions of thickness reduction (Δt/t₀, t₀ and t are the thicknesses of the AA6061 sheet before and after the cold rolling, respectively). The volume fraction of total deformation texture is relatively independent of the thickness reduction for Δt/t₀ ≤ 30%, and becomes an approximately linearly increasing function of the thickness reduction for Δt/t₀ > 30%. Increasing the thickness reduction causes the increase of the Vickers hardness of the cross-section of the cold-rolled sheets, which exhibits a similar increase trend to the volume fraction of total deformation texture for Δt/t₀ > 30%. A simple relation between the Vickers hardness and the thickness reduction is established and is used to curve-fit the experimental results.