PII:

Acta mater. Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 579583, 1999

# 1999 Acta Metallurgica Inc.
Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
S1359-6454(98)00365-6
1359-6454/99 $19.00 + 0.00

NOVEL ULTRA-HIGH STRAINING PROCESS FOR BULK

MATERIALSDEVELOPMENT OF THE ACCUMULATIVE
ROLL-BONDING (ARB) PROCESS
Y. SAITO, H. UTSUNOMIYA{, N. TSUJI and T. SAKAI
Division of Materials Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University,
2-1 Yamada-oka, Suita 565-0871, Japan
(Received 19 August 1998; accepted 9 October 1998)
AbstractA novel intense plastic straining process named accumulative roll-bonding (ARB) is proposed.
First, a strip is neatly placed on top of another strip. The two layers of material are joined together by rolling like a roll-bonding process. Then, the length of rolled material is sectioned into two halves. The sectioned strips are again stacked and roll-bonded. The whole process is repeated again and again. The
process can introduce ultra-high plastic strain without any geometrical change if the reduction in thickness
is maintained to 50% every rolling pass. The process has been applied to commercial aluminum (1100),
AlMg alloy (5083) and interstitial free (IF) steel. Well-bonded bulk materials were successfully obtained.
After several cycles of ARB, ultra-ne (sub-micron) grain structure with large misorientations, i.e. polycrystal, was formed and the materials were strengthened dramatically. # 1999 Acta Metallurgica Inc. Published
by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. INTRODUCTION

It has been reported that materials with ultra-ne

(sub-micron) grains show outstanding high strength
at ambient temperatures, high-speed superplastic
deformation at elevated temperatures, and high corrosion resistance. These materials, known as super
metals, have given rise to much interest. They have
been produced by various uncommon techniques
such as rapid solidication, vapor deposition, mechanical alloying, cryogenic metalforming and intense
plastic straining. Intense plastic straining is considered the most appropriate process for industrial
application. Special processes such as cyclic extrusion compression (CEC) [1], equal channel angular
press (ECAP) [2] and torsion straining under high
pressure (TS) [3] have already been proposed as
intense plastic straining and successfully applied to
various materials. However, these processes have
two main drawbacks. Firstly, forming machines
with large load capacities and expensive dies are
indispensable for these processes. Secondly, the productivity is relatively low and the amount of materials produced is very limited. These processes are
thought to be inappropriate for practical application, especially for large-sized structural materials
such as sheets.
The authors now propose an alternative novel
intense plastic straining process named accumulative roll-bonding (ARB) [4] for bulk-material manufacturing at high productivity. In this paper, the
{To whom all correspondence should be addressed.
579

principle of the ARB process and some convincing

experimental results are presented.
2. ACCUMULATIVE ROLL-BONDING (ARB)

Figure 1 schematically represents the proposed

ARB process. Stacking of materials and conventional roll-bonding are repeated in the process.
First, a strip is neatly placed on top of another
strip. The interfaces of the two strips are surfacetreated in advance in order to enhance bond
strength, if required. The two layers of material are
joined together by rolling, as in a conventional rollbonding process. Then, the length of rolled material
is sectioned into two halves. The sectioned strips
are again surface-treated, stacked and roll-bonded.
The whole process is repeated again and again. The
process should be conducted at elevated temperature below recrystallization temperature because
recrystallization cancels out the accumulated strain.
Low temperature would result in insucient ductility and bond strength. There exists a minimum
limit of reduction in thickness, i.e. threshold deformation to attain sucient bonding. It is well known
that the threshold deformation decreases with temperature. If the homologous temperature of the
roll-bonding is less than 0.5, a sound joining can be
achieved by reduction >50% [5]. This means that
materials can be bonded together without recrystallization.
The process can introduce ultra-high plastic
strain without any geometrical change, if the reduction in thickness is maintained to 50% in every

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SAITO et al.: ACCUMULATIVE ROLL-BONDING

Fig. 1. Diagrammatic representation of the accumulative roll-bonding (ARB) process.

rolling pass, because the increase in width is negligible in sheet rolling. The achieved strain is unlimited since repetition times are endless in principle.
Arbitrarily large deformation is possible by the
ARB process. When the reduction is 50% per cycle,
the thickness of the initial strip after n cycles is
t

t0
2n

where t0 is the initial thickness of strips.

The total reduction rt after n cycles is
rt 1

t
1
1 n:
t0
2

Assuming von Mises yield criterion and plane strain

condition, i.e. no lateral spreading, the equivalent
plastic strain e is expressed by

 
2
1
e p ln
 n 0:80n:
3
2
3

materials were fully annealed before the ARB process. The mean grain sizes were 37, 18 and 27 mm
for 1100, 5083 and IF steel, respectively. The width
was limited by the load capacity of rolling mills
used. The interface between two strips was
degreased by acetone and scratch-brushed. A 304
stainless-wire bevel brush driven by a hand grinder
was used for this purpose. Two strips were layered
to set brushed surfaces in contact and xed to each
other closely. For this purpose, four holes, which
had been drilled in the vicinity of the four corners
of strips were bound rmly by wires as shown in
Fig. 2(a).
The layered strips were heated in a box-type electric furnace before roll-bonding. The roll-bonding
was performed by 50%-reduction rolling under dry

For example, if the process is repeated seven times,

the initial thickness is reduced to 1/128. The 1.0 mm
thickness reduces to 7.8 mm. The achieved total reduction is 99.2% and the total equivalent plastic
strain is 5.6. In case of 10 cycles, the nal thickness
is 1.0 mm, the total reduction is 99.9% and the
strain is 8.0. It is easy to introduce ultra-high strain
into materials by the ARB process.
3. EXPERIMENTAL

In order to study the feasibility of the ARB process, three kinds of materials [i.e. commercial aluminum (1100), AlMg alloy (5083) and Ti-added
interstitial free (IF) steel], were chosen. The initial
dimensions of the materials were 1.0 mm in thickness, 20 mm in width and 300 mm in length. All

Fig. 2. Appearance of initial and ARB processed 5083

strips at 473 K: (a) initial; (b) and (c) after three cycles.

SAITO et al.: ACCUMULATIVE ROLL-BONDING

581

Table 1. Roll-bonding conditions

Material
Al (1100)
AlMg (5083)
IF steel

Heating

Roll diameter (mm)

Roll speed (m/min)

Mean strain rate (/s)

473 K  5 min
473 K  5 min
773 K  10 min

255
310
310

10
43
43

12
46
46

conditions. The heating and other conditions are

listed in Table 1. Well-bonded bulk materials were
successfully obtained. However, excessively high
total reduction, i.e. repetition times, sometimes
resulted in edge cracks or center fracture as shown
in Figs 2(b) and (c). It may be due to tensile stress
caused by lateral spreading near the edges. The lateral spreading cannot be neglected when the aspect
ratio (width/thickness) is less than 10 [6]. In order
to avoid propagation of edge cracks in following
cycles, both edges of the roll-bonded strip were
trimmed by shearing. The leading and trailing ends
of strips were cropped. These edge cracks may not
occur in the case of industrial materials with high
aspect ratio.
The longitudinal cross sections normal to the
transverse direction were observed by an optical
microscope. Transmission electron microscopy
(TEM) studies were also conducted using a
HITACHI H-800 microscope operated at 200 kV.
For this purpose, thin foils parallel to the rolling
plane were prepared by twin-jet polishing. The
mechanical properties of initial and several-cycle
processed strips were measured by tensile test at
ambient temperature by an Instron-type testing machine. Tensile-test specimens were spark-machined
so that the tensile direction was parallel to the rolling direction. The gauge length was 10 mm and the

gauge width was 5 mm. The cross-head speed was

0.5 mm/min so that the initial strain rate was
8.3  104/s.
4. RESULTS

Optical micrographs of ARB processed IF steel

are shown in Fig. 3. In the case of two-cycle processed material [Fig. 3(c)], the interface introduced
in the second cycle is seen clearly. It is dicult to
nd the interfaces of the rst pass at a quarter of
the thickness. This meant that the subsequent rolling suciently improves the bonding of interfaces
introduced in a previous cycle. The severely sheared
structure can be observed just below the surface.
After ve cycles, the whole thickness is covered by
very thin and elongated grains and it is very dicult to observe individual grains as shown in
Fig. 3(d). Figure 4 shows TEM micrographs of several-cycle ARB processed materials. The associated
selected area diraction (SAD) patterns taken from
the center of the eld by use of an aperture (1.8 mm
in diameter) are also shown in the gure. The structure is of a granular type with equiaxed grains. The
grain sizes are less than 0.5 mm. The SAD patterns
have numerous reections along circles. Such patterns indicate that large misorientations exist
between individual grains. Therefore, it is clear that

Fig. 3. Longitudinal cross section of initial and ARB processed IF steel strips.

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SAITO et al.: ACCUMULATIVE ROLL-BONDING

5. DISCUSSIONS

Fig. 4. TEM micrographs and SAD patterns of ARB processed strips.

an ultra-ne (sub-micron) grain structure with large

misorientations, i.e. polycrystal, was formed.
Mechanical properties of initial and ARB processed materials are compared in Table 2. In the
case of aluminum 1100, the tensile strength of commercially available full-hardened material (temper
grade H18) is 0165 MPa [7]. The tensile strength of
the ARB processed 1100 (eight cycles) is 1.8 times
higher than that of the 1100-H18. The ARB processed 5183 and IF steel also showed extremely
high strength, however, the elongation decreased
from 8 to 5%. On the other hand, the material still
shows sucient ductility, despite the fact that the
materials were highly strained.

It is made clear that the proposed accumulative

roll-bonding (ARB) process causes ultra-ne (submicron) grains and surprising strength. These eects
are conrmed experimentally by three materials:
aluminum (1100), AlMg alloy (5083) and Ti-added
interstitial free steel.
There are two possible additional mechanisms in
the ARB process which dier from other high
straining processes. The rst possible mechanism is
the eect of severe shear deformation just below the
surface. It has been reported that severe shear deformation is introduced by friction between the
workpiece and the roll under dry conditions [8].
This shear deformation signicantly increases the
equivalent strain from the value calculated by
equation (3) and promotes grain renement.
Moreover, the ARB process can introduce this
severely deformed region into the interior of the
material by repetition. The whole thickness of materials may be severely strained after several cycles.
The other mechanism is the introduction of new
interfaces. A large number of interfaces are introduced by several ARB cycles. These interfaces show
a well-developed ber structure. The oxide lms on
the surfaces, as well as inclusions, are dispersed uniformly by repetition. These things contribute to the
strength and may act as obstacles for grain growth.
In the case of 1100 aluminum, the variation in
structure and mechanical properties in the ARB
process were investigated in Ref. [9]. However, the
general mechanism of the grain renement during
ARB is still unclear at this stage and requires
further study.
The advantage of this process against other high
straining processes is its high productivity and the
feasibility of large-sized material production.
Although the experiments have been carried out
with narrow 20 mm wide materials in this study, it
is supposed that application to bulk materials such
as wide strips in a coil is not dicult. The process
does not require any special machines because the
roll-bonding is widely adopted in clad metal
production [10]. The process can be readily industrialized.

6. CONCLUSIONS
Table 2. Mechanical properties of initial and ARB processed materials
Material

No.
of cycles

Tensile
strength (MPa)

Elongation (%)

Al (1100)
Al (1100)
AlMg (5083)
AlMg (5083)
IF steel
IF steel

0 (initial)
8
0 (initial)
7
0 (initial)
5

84
304
319
551
274
751

42
8
25
6
57
6

A novel ultra-high straining process, the accumulative roll-bonding (ARB) process is proposed. The
ARB process has successfully been applied to
aluminum (1100), AlMg alloy (5083) and Ti-added
interstitial free steel. All three several-cycle ARB
processed materials have structures with sub-micron
grains and show very high strength. The proposed
ARB is a promising process for the manufacture of
high-strength bulk materials at a high level of productivity.

SAITO et al.: ACCUMULATIVE ROLL-BONDING

AcknowledgementsWe are grateful to J. Miyamoto, R.G. Hong and S. Tanigawa of Osaka University for experimental assistance. Nakayama Steel Works, Ltd are
thanked for improvements in the rolling mill and
Sumitomo Light Metal Industries, Ltd and NKK
Corporation for material supplies. This study was nancially supported by the Japan Research and Development
Center for Metals (JRCM).
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