In this study, bottom-up powder processing and top-down severe plastic deformation processing approaches were combined in order to achieve both full density and grain refinement with least grain growth. The numerical modeling of the powder process requires the appropriate constitutive model for densification of the powder materials. The present research investigates the effect of representative powder yield function of the Shima-Oyane model and the critical relative density model. It was found that the critical relative density model is better than the Shima-Oyane model for powder densification behavior, especially for initial stage.

In this study, the bottom-up powder metallurgy and the top-down severe plastic deformation (SPD) techniques for manufacturing bulk nanomaterials were combined in order to achieve both full density and grain refinement without grain growth of rapidly solidified Al-20 wt% Si alloy powders during consolidation processing. Continuous equal channel multi-angular processing (C-ECMAP) was proposed to improve low productivity of conventional ECAP, one of the most promising method in SPD. As a powder consolidation method, C-ECMAP was employed. A wide range of experimental studies were carried out for characterizing mechanical properties and microstructures of the ECMAP processed materials. It was found that effective properties of high strength and full density maintaining nanoscale microstructure are achieved. The proposed SPD processing of powder materials can be a good method to achieve fully density and nanostructured materials.

Manufacturing bulk nanostructured materials with least grain growth from initial powders is challenging because of the bottle neck of bottom-up methods using the conventional powder metallurgy of compaction and sintering. In this study, bottom-up type powder metallurgy processing and top-down type SPD (Severe Plastic Deformation) approaches were combined in order to achieve both real density and grain refinement of metallic powders. ECAP (Equal Channel Angular Pressing), one of the most promising processes in SPD, was used for the powder consolidation method. For understanding the ECAP process, investigating the powder density as well as internal stress, strain distribution is crucial. We investigated the consolidation and plastic deformation of the metallic powders during ECAP using the finite element simulations. Almost independent behavior of powder densification in the entry channel and shear deformation in the main deformation zone was found by the finite element method. Effects of processing parameters on densification and density distributions were investigated.