Evaluation of Efficiency of Electrically Assisted Rapid Annealing Compared to Rapid Induction Heat Treatment

The athermal effect of electric current during electrically assisted (EA) annealing, which is a simple and cost-effective heat treatment technique, is assessed by comparing the performances of EA annealing and induction heat treatment (IHT), using aluminum alloy specimens with a high dislocation density from cold rolling. The dislocation densities after EA annealing and IHT are calculated using X-ray diffraction data to compare the performance of the processes. The performance of EA annealing clearly surpasses that of IHT in a certain temperature range. However, at higher temperatures, the thermal effect alone is able to induce nearly complete annihilation of dislocation density, thus, the practical advantage of EA annealing may diminish.