Experimental characterization of the AA7075 aluminum alloy using hot shear compression test

The experimental characterization of the material under shear loading is essential for researchers to study the plastic behavior of materials during manufacturing processes. Indeed, regardless of the loading mode, ductile materials mainly deform plastically under shear loading. Thus, for such material behavior analysis, shear tests are very useful. In this paper, a test procedure is defined to characterize the shear deformation of AA7075 aluminum alloy at high strain under compression loading. The Finite Element (FE) simulation is used to select the suitable specimen geometry for the testing. Finally, the experimental tests are carried out using a conventional compression device at a constant strain rate of 0.1 s⁻¹ and at an elevated temperature of 20–500 °C. The results show that the drop in the flow stress curved relative to the increase in temperature exhibits the softening mechanism. The homogeneous behavior of the shear strain along the shear region was also observed and shown by the macro and micro images. The effect of temperature and equivalent strain on the evolution of the microstructure is discussed in detail. It is discovered that, various dynamic recrystallization mechanisms were recorded for aluminum alloy AA7075 depending on the imposed strain conditions.