Experimental assessment of a low-energy-consumption heat treatment effect on the fatigue life of an Al 6061-T6 alloy

not-yet-known not-yet-known not-yet-known unknown In this work, the effect of aging variables of a proposed heat treatment and their combined impact on the fatigue life of an Al6061-T6 were evaluated. Al 6061-T6 specimens were prepared according to the ASTM E466 and then heat-treated, followed by fatigue tests in a rotating beam testing machine. The results showed an increase in the fatigue life of Al6061-T6 up to 4.47 times and up to 4.69 regarding the aging temperature and the aging time, respectively. Three empirical models to estimate the fatigue life in function of the aging time, aging temperature, and both aging time and temperature were obtained by fitting the experimental, showing a correlation of R 2 =90%, R 2 =79.2%, and R 2 =80.1%, respectively. The proposed heat treatment also decreased the energy consumed by the process by 67.8% than that consumed by the T6 heat treatment of the raw material as a consequence of reducing the time of the process.