Non-isothermal creep age forming of Al-Cu-Li alloy: Experiment and modelling

Non-isothermal Creep Age Forming (CAF), including loading, heating, holding, cooling and springback stages, is an advanced forming technique for manufacturing high performance large integral panels at short production period and low cost. However, the creep deformation and aging precipitation during heating stage is often neglected in experiments and modeling, leading to low forming precision. To achieve shape forming and property tailoring simultaneously, a deep understanding of the non-isothermal creep aging behavior and the establishment of predictive models are urgently required. A new five-stage creep feature of Al-Cu-Li alloy during the non-isothermal creep aging is observed. The microstructural interactions between the dislocations, solute atoms, Guinier Preston zones (GP zones) and T₁ precipitates are found to dominate the five-stage creep aging behavior. The physical-based model considering temperature evolution history is established to describe the five-stage creep feature. The springback and yield strength of non-isothermal creep age formed plates with different thicknesses are predicted and compared by non-isothermal CAF experiments and corresponding simulations. The CAF experiments show that the springback and yield strength of the non-isothermal creep age formed plate are 62.1% and 506 MPa, respectively. Simulation results are in good agreement with experimental results. The proposed model broadens the application of traditional CAF models that mainly focus on isothermal conditions.