2026 Nikhil CFALEP Severe Plastic Deformation

This study presents a novel Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) process, named the Cyclic-Friction Assisted Lateral Extrusion Process (C-FALEP), which was developed to produce sheet metal. The process enables the fabrication of long sheets while imposing large shear strains (~25) in a single step. The feasibility and effectiveness of this process are demonstrated on commercially pure Mg. Long, severe plastically deformed sheets of 25 mm width, with different thicknesses ranging from 1 to 0.2 mm and lengths ranging from 1.2 to 6.3 m, were produced. Detailed microstructural, textural, and mechanical characterization was performed on the 1 mm thick sheet. The process resulted in substantial grain refinement, reducing the average grain size from approximately 4000 µm in the as-cast condition to less than 4 µm after processing. The microstructures were homogeneous across the length and thickness of the sheet. A significant improvement in tensile strength, from 80 MPa (cast Mg) to 170 MPa, was achieved in the 1 mm thick sheet. Ductility dropped marginally from around 20 to 15%. Electron backscatter diffraction analysis revealed the development of a high fraction of recrystallized grains and high-angle grain boundaries, along with some sub-grain boundaries, indicating that grain fragmentation is dominated by continuous dynamic recrystallization.