Aluminum and its alloys are widely used materials in automobile, aircraft and space craft industries due to their high strength- to- weight ratio and corrosion resistance beside their other useful properties. They are the second materials in use after steel alloys. Most of the failures in parts of aircrafts and space vehicles are mainly caused by fatigue and stress corrosion cracking. In this paper, the effect of shot peening on the fatigue life of commercially pure aluminumand two of its alloys namely:Al-2024 and Al-7075-T6 is presented and discussed. Furthermore, the effect of addition of vanadium to Al and Al grain refined by Ti and Ti+Bon Its fatigue life and strengthis also presented and discussed using scanning electron microscope, SEM. It was that shot peening and the addition of V toAl and Al onAl grain refined by Ti and Ti+B have resulted in enhancement of the fatigue life and strength. Ffinally, the effect of shot peening on the surface quality of the peened parts is also presented and discussed.

The mechanical properties and the fractured surfaces of commercial purity aluminum modified by zirconium micro-additives were investigated by means of experimental examination. A commercial purity Al specimen was used as a reference material and seven Al-Zr alloys in the 0.02–0.14 wt.% Zr composition range (with 0.02 wt.% Zr step) were prepared by microalloying methods. Optical microscopy was used to examine the microstructures and to calculate the grain sizes of the prepared specimens. The phase assemblage diagrams were plotted and the relative amounts of solid phases were calculated at room temperature using FactSage thermochemical software and databases. Proof stress, strength coefficient and strain hardening exponent were measured from the stress-strain curves obtained from tensile experiments and Charpy impact energy was calculated for all specimens. The experiments showed that the grain size of commercial purity Al was reduced by adding any Zr concentration in the investigated composition range, which could be due to the nucleation of new grains at Al₃Zr particle sites. Accordingly, the microhardness number, tensile properties and Charpy impact energy were improved, owing to the large grain-boundary areas resulted from the refining effect of Zr, which can limit the movement of dislocations in the refined samples. The basic fracture mode in all specimens was ductile, because Al has an FCC structure and remains ductile even at low temperatures. The ductile fractures took place in a transgranular manner as could be concluded from the fractured surface features, which include voids, ridges and cavitation.

Metal forming industries are constantly looking for advanced innovation, economical and energy efficient techniques. Superplastic forming has a great potential to be one of those advanced forming methods. It is a near net shape forming process which uses a unique type of materials where elongation exceeds 200% during a controlled forming conditions, e.g. temperature, pressure, and strain rate. Most of superplastic materials are formed by gas technique at elevated temperature. The main objectives of the research work in this paper were: to study the effects of the forming schemes on the forming time and thickness distribution of the formed and device a method to improve the forming part thickness and its uniformity distribution and the forming time. In this paper, a hydraulic and heating system were designed and manufactured to facilitate the experimental investigation. The superplastic magnesium alloy AZ31, Mg AZ31, was formed at 350°C with different strain rates to investigate the effect of the forming pressure profiles on the thickness uniformity of the superplastic formed part. The pressure profiles were generated based on Dutta and Mukherjee analytical approach. Finally, a variable strain rate method is modified to improve the uniformity of the thickness distribution of the formed part and reduce the forming time; which is a major limitation of superplastic forming.

It was repeatedly reported that the clay bricks industry in Jordan is facing both weak mechanical strength and poor quality which caused marketing problems where it is expected to serve the increasing demand of housing in the country especially after the political crises in the neighboring countries Iraq and Syria. It is therefore anticipated that improvement of the mechanical strength and quality of the produced clay evaluation of the brick industry in Jordan is worth investigating. In this paper, theoretical and experimental investigation obtained from field visits to the factories producing clay bricks were carried out. Furthermore, the effect of using some additives from locally available materials namely: Battn El-Ghoul Clay, Suweileh sand and Olive extracts on the mechanical strength, thermal conductivity and surface quality of the produced bricks is investigated and discussed. The experimental results indicated that thermal conductivity, color and durability were all enhanced and the ultimate compressive strength was reduced but remained higher than the acceptable value for brickwork.

Magnesium-aluminum alloys are versatile materials which are used in manufacturing a number of engineering and industrial parts in the automobile and aircraft industries due to their strength - to -weight -ratios. Against these preferable characteristics, magnesium is difficult to deform at room temperature; therefore it is alloyed with other elements mainly aluminum and zinc to add some required properties particularly to achieve high strength -to- weight ratio. Grain refinement is an important technology to improve the mechanical propertiesand the microstructure uniformity of the alloys. Most of the published work on grain refinement was directed toward grain refining aluminum and zinc alloys; however, the effect of the addition of rare earth material on the grain size or the mechanical behavior of Mg alloys is rare. In this paper the effect of Ti addition on the grain size, mechanical behavior, ductility, extrusion force and energy, of Mg-AZ31 alloy both in the as cast condition and after direct extrusion is investigated.