Effect of cast and extruded stock on grain structure of EN AW 6082 alloy forgings

There has been a rapid increase in the use of aluminium forgings in the automotive industry, where weight savings is a critical requirement for reduced fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. Extruded bar is the typical forging stock particularly in the manufacture of suspension components. There has been a great interest to replace the extruded forging stock with cast billets of the same diameter. The casting and extrusion routes for the manufacture of EN AW 6082 alloy forging stock were compared in the present work. The control arm produced via forging of the cast stock offers a very uniform grain structure and much superior surface quality with respect to its counterpart produced by the forging of the extruded stock owing to a much smaller grain structure at the surface of the forged component after the T6 heat treatment.