Precipitation strengthening of aluminum alloys by room-temperature cyclic plasticity

Pushing and pulling for high strength High-strength aluminum alloys are important for producing lightweight cars, trains, and airplanes. The traditional strategy for doing this is through hours of high-temperature cycling to form precipitates in the alloy. Sun et al. developed a processing method that relies on mechanical cycling by pushing and pulling on the alloys at room temperature. This quickly creates many very fine precipitates that have the same strengthening effect as those characteristic of traditional thermal methods. This method should also work for other alloy systems. Science , this issue p. 972