A New Creep Constitutive Model for 7075 Aluminum Alloy Under Elevated Temperatures

Exposure of aluminum alloy to an elastic loading, during "creep-aging forming" or other manufacturing processes at relatively high temperature, may lead to the lasting creep deformation. The creep behaviors of 7075 aluminum alloy are investigated by uniaxial tensile creep experiments over wide ranges of temperature and external stress. The results show that the creep behaviors of the studied aluminum alloy strongly depend on the creep temperature, external stress, and creep time. With the increase of creep temperature and external stress, the creep strain increases quickly. In order to overcome the shortcomings of the Bailey-Norton law and θ projection method, a new constitutive model is proposed to describe the variations of creep strain with time for the studied aluminum alloy. In the proposed model, the dependences of creep strain on the creep temperature, external stress, and creep time are well taken into account. A good agreement between the predicted and measured creep strains shows that the established creep constitutive model can give an accurate description of the creep behaviors of 7075 aluminum alloy. Meanwhile, the obtained stress exponent indicates that the creep process is controlled by the dislocation glide, which is verified by the microstructural observations.