Structure and Properties of Copper after Drece Processing

During last two decades great attention was paid to materials with grains of diameter smaller than 1 μm. These materials were classified as Ultra Fine Grain (UFG) materials with diameter of grains of the order of 100 to 1000 nm and nano-materials with mean diameters of grains smaller than 50 nm. This research concerned the whole production of UFG materials, using Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) method. One of them is new type of equipment DRECE (Dual Rolling Equal Channel Extrusion), designated for obtaining UFG structure in strip of sheet. Experiments with use of material Cu 99.5% were made on the DRECE machines in order to achieve grain refinement in the strip of sheet with dimensions 58 x 2 x 1 000 mm. For orientation information, whether grain was refined preliminary metallographic analysis was made on optical microscope NEOPHOT 2. Structure was analysed on the surface in longitudinal direction in respect to direction of rolling, and also in cross section and longitudinal section. Altogether to 10 passes were made through the DRECE tool. Comparison was made for initial state and for the state after the third pass. According to the degree of the obtained results of extrusion of the sheet made of Cu (99.5%) it is possible to state that the equipment is fully functional.