Thermal Ageing Effect on Electro-Mechanical Properties of Work Hardened High Conductive Copper Based Material

Abstract

High conductive materials may undergo work hardening in the process of manufacturing and utilization as machine parts. Moreover, these materials face various thermal conditions at operational environment. As a consequence, the electro-mechanical properties of these materials get changed, which in turn affect their operational ability as these materials need to maintain high conductivity along with desirable mechanical properties. It gratifies to investigate the effect of thermal ageing on the electro-mechanical properties and microstructure of high conductive copper based material. In this work, the samples are prepared from copper ingot and alloy collected from local market. From the bulk material, long bars are taken, and they are at first homogenized and solution treated, and then they have been work hardened at different level in two conditions i.e., at room temperature and near recrystallization temperature. Thereafter, a series of experiments are carried out to determine the changes in conductivity, micro-hardness, strength, elongation and microstructure of samples as a function of thermal ageing temperature. Most of the mechanical properties after thermal ageing are found to be influenced quite significantly by work hardening.