Hello ,
Electrical resistance change can be a simple way to show this . An aged and pure alloy will have different resistance .
Am not completely sure I understand the question - whether looking for test methods to be used or an overall set of experiments to run. Typically, "age curves" are developed for an aluminum alloy to evaluate the increase / decrease of properties during aging. For example, one would take "untreated" material and put it into an age oven at a set temperature, then remove samples every increment of time (every 1 hr, 2 hr, or other increment depending on your need). Then perform testing (YS, UTS, elong, ROA, crush properties, bend response, corrosion response) and plot the results vs. time.
A typical graph of YS should show a pronounced increase in strength which reaches a peak strength, then tapers off slowly; UTS should increase slowly then taper slowly after peak; elongation should decrease with age time. Of course, this assumes the alloys are heat-treatable.
Can also be used to determine the effects of natural aging or other phenomena besides "forced" changes like elevated temperature aging.
Non-heat-treatable alloys should still have properties that change with aging or heat treatment, although not nearly as pronounced as heat-treatable alloys. As Nagesh Dhumma has stated, electrical conductivity / resistivity can also be used to evaluate how much alloying elements are still in solid solution or have precipitated out.
Hope this helps.
Thank you, David Betz
This is almost the same procedure I applied for my experiments. Further, I used microscopy to define the grain size of the aluminum alloy after grinding and polishing the specimen.
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