Different industries and production process have different requirements for aluminum sheet metal in mechanical property, so it will require aluminum sheet metal manufacturers to have strengthening treatment in the process of production of aluminum sheet metal. At present, there are two mainstream methods to strengthen aluminum sheet metal in aluminum industry: it is strengthening in product process and solid-solution to strengthen the aluminum sheet metal.
1. Strengthening in Aluminum Sheet Metal Processing
Strengthening in product process is also called the cold hardening, it is means aluminum sheet metal below the recrystallization temperature and experience cold deformation processing such as forging, rolling, drawing, or stretching. When process in cold deformation, aluminum sheet’s metal internal dislocation density will be increase, and entangled with each other and form the cellular structure, which will hinder dislocation motion. The greater the degree of deformation dislocation tangles, the greater the deformation resistance, the higher the strength will increase. After the cold deformation, the degree of strengthening is different according to different deformation degree, deformation temperature and the properties of the material itself. Cold deformation under the same material at the same temperature, the higher the degree of deformation, the greater the strength, but plasticity is lower.
2. Solid-solution to Strengthen the Aluminum Sheet Metal
Add some alloy elementS in the pure aluminum to form an infinite solid solution or limited solid solution, which not only can obtain high strength, but also can obtain excellent plasticity and good pressure processing performance. In generally, the most commonly used alloying elements in aluminum solid solution strengthening are copper, magnesium, manganese, zinc, silicon, nickel and other elements. aluminum sheets metal are generally formed limited solid solution formation, such as Al-Cu，Al-Mg，Al-Zn，Al-Si，Al-Mn snd other binary alloy formation of solid solution, and they all have larger limit for solubility which can have effect of larger solid solution strengthening.
Strengthening aluminum sheet metal, the strength performance will be improved obviously , but its hardness could not have been promoted again; When reach the maximum hardness, no matter what method, it cannot continue to improve the hardness of aluminum sheet, and it has to choose other temper with higher base hardness..