Experimental Study of the Interaction between Recrystallization and Precipitation Processes of an AA8011 Commercial Alloy

Phase changes in a commercial AA8011 alloy from different initial microstructure conditions were studied using thermoelectric power (), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques with the purpose of obtaining evidence of the interaction between recovery-precipitation and recrystallization-precipitation processes occurring during nonisothermal heating at different rates. Thermoelectric power and its thermal derivative reflect this evidence by a displacement of the characteristic precipitation peaks, the recovery and recrystallization contributions remaining masked by the strong incidence of the iron precipitation on that property, while DSC measurements detect the emergence of new peaks not observed on thermograms of homogenized samples. An exhaustive study of these peaks permits direct differentiation between precipitation and recovery-recrystallization contributions. TEM confirms the interaction between both processes by means of local observations.