Investigation of the effects on the physical and metallurgical properties occurred by application of thermomechanical processes on flight critical parts produced from 2024 aluminum

The Usage of aluminum in industrial applications is increasing day by day, especially alloying aluminum is the most common product to achieve lightweighting targets in automotive and aerospace industry. Aluminum alloys are special materials that enable high life endurance with higher corrosion resistance whereas at the same time giving high strength and more lightweight products. In this thesis study, it was aimed to achieve strength increase by applying special swaging operation together with conventional and cryogenic heat treatments to the tubes produced from aluminum materials. Experimental studies applied on the pipes produced from aluminum 2024 T0 by swaging in mechanical benches and then crystallization heat treatment in order to achieve homogeneous internal structures. The deep cryogenic treatment results in increased strength and fine grain size because the percent of elongation is homogeneous. In the microstructure investigations, it was observed that the cryogenic treatment added homogeneity to the grain sizes. This was also observed during SEM analysis as the sample had surface irregularities before deep cryogenic treatment, whereas other image of deep cryogenic applied sample had nearly no irregularity which indicates grain coarsening of AA 2024 samples. Keywords: Aluminum alloys, swaging, cryogenic heat treatment, thermomechanical properties, surface characterization.