Effect of Annealing on Mechanical Properties of Copper Alloys Deformed at Cryogenic Temperature

The effect of annealing treatment on the mechanical properties and microstructure of cold-rolled Cu-20% Zn alloys was investigated in this work. Mechanical properties changed dramatically with the increase of temperature. According to the microhardness test, it can roughly concluded that 150 is the optimal annealing temperature for deformation, at which a uniform elongation increased from 1.4658% before annealing to about 6.89%, and the elongation to failure increased from 7.426% to 16.81% with the same strength almost retained. The changes of microstructure during the annealing process are mainly distributed to the improvement of mechanical properties.